


Part One: System Crash

by TheSometimesAnarchist



Series: The Desperation Protocol [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Parallel Story Line
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-05 04:32:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10297589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSometimesAnarchist/pseuds/TheSometimesAnarchist
Summary: Rome wasn’t built in a day but even great empires can fall in that time. Outbreak, pandemic, plague: whatever the name, there was a cap where it reached critical levels and couldn’t be contained. A balloon filled to the brink, it burst; the explosion sudden and absolute. It took one day for their world to go to shit.





	1. The Scenic Route

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on a multi-part series that runs parallel to The Walking Dead with my own OCs, the premise stemming from in depth conversations of 'what would we do' in the event of a zombie apocalypse and spiraling into a concrete story and concept. It shouldn't have to be said that any story within the Walking Dead verse is going to be riddled with all sorts of nasty stuff that deserves warnings: Gore, Rape/Non-con, Animal Death/Cruelty, Cannibalism, Self-Harm/Suicide, Hate-Speech, Slurs - all canon typical, all potentially triggering, plenty of offensive shit. Gritty realism is the aim and there will be very little censoring.

Her phone wasn’t working, and the only thing she could get on the radio was the emergency alert system, no matter how many times she scanned through the stations. Abby forced a deep breath, blowing out slowly and purposely through pursed lips as the swooping, fluttering in her chest warred with her need to stay in control, no matter how stressful things seemed to get. It was hard, though. She was shaking as she threw her cigarette butt out the window and immediately fished another out of the pack sitting in the passenger’s seat. Nervousness always made her smoke like a chimney and even though she could feel the burn in the back of her throat and the ache in her lungs, she fit the fresh cigarette between her lips and pressed in the cigarette lighter on the dash.

The radio just kept blaring that obnoxious honking beep that was meant to get and keep people’s attention. But unlike every other time she had heard it throughout her life there was no following message stating, “this was a test of the emergency alert system,” and instead it kept playing the same thing over and over again about evacuations to safe-zones, telling people to head for the nearest one and so on. That was all. There were no details, no information about what was happening, absolutely nothing useful. Just the same message stating that the entire state was supposed to evacuate to the nearest refuge city – they hadn’t even bothered listing off specific counties, just saying that a state-wide evacuation was in effect and rattling off cities where refuges were set up. The only clue she had was half-known facts about some rioting happening across the world. There had been a lot of fighting lately, a lot of violence. Riots and mobs, people killing each other – they’d been getting worse and worse, and she’d heard that there might be a virus causing it, some nasty bug that made people go crazy and start literally tearing each other apart. Claws, teeth – she wasn’t sure how much she believed about it, but there was talk about people getting eaten.

Abby slammed on her brakes suddenly, her car skidding to a hard stop. She wasn’t surprised that the SUV behind her didn’t manage to stop before knocking into her rear bumper. Not real hard, but enough that her rear hatch was probably dented.  She didn’t care. The highway in front of her was packed – the highway she always took to get back home, the only route she knew. The latest job she’d taken wasn’t all that far out, but still it was a town she didn’t know, a place she couldn’t find her way out of now that the main highway was blocked with traffic.

It was terrifying. The highway was full on backed-up, bumper-to-bumper traffic that was so out of place in a middle of nowhere town. What the hell was going on? She was a good 40 miles away from Springfield, one of the ‘refuge cities’ they kept listing on the broadcast. Was it actually backed up all that way? She heard the horns blaring, saw people flitting about outside their cars in a manner that seemed like they had been there for hours already and decided in that second that there was no way in hell she was getting on that highway. The SUV behind her gunned its engine and Abby’s car shuddered as the pressure was suddenly released from the rear end. The woman in the passenger’s seat flipped her off as the Tahoe whipped around her, only to come to a screeching halt again as it pulled up to the end of the line of cars uselessly waiting for a chance to get on the highway.

Abby crunched her shifter into reverse, craning her neck over her shoulder and backing up onto the narrow shoulder of the road she’d just come down, ignoring the cars that were pulling in behind her. She revved the engine a bit too hard, screeching the tires a bit as she let off the clutch and barely missed clipping mirrors. She had to slam her brakes as a car pulled out into her path from a side-street. As soon as it was clear there was finally enough room to turn her car completely around and she was off, speeding away from the growing line of cars waiting to pull onto the highway. It wasn’t until she was well off the main streets that she stopped on a rough country road that led out of the town completely. For a few minutes she just sat there, aggravated. The sun was beating through the window and she ripped the bandana off her head, running her fingers through the short, sweaty curls that were plastered to her head after a long day of work.

Everything felt urgent and she raced through all the junk in her car to find the Missouri State map that was probably still somewhere though she couldn’t remember the last time she used it. The map was under the back seat, crusty and stained brown from what was probably spilled coffee. It tore a little when Abby unfolded it and it took some searching but she was able to find where she was on the map. It took even longer to trace out the back roads and find a route that would take her somewhere familiar, somewhere that led to roads she knew, that would lead her back home. The route was somewhat complicated and looked about twice as long as the straight shot on the highway, but it was all she got. She carefully wrote out the directions in a quick, easy to access list so she wouldn’t have to keep checking the map every few miles. A minute later found her racing as fast as she dared down some zig-zag of a country road that was supposed to dump her out on some tore up old highway that ran through ten different types of nowhere, hoping with everything she had that a hair short of half a tank would get her through.

It was desolate. She had nothing to distract her from the tickling pressure that was building in her chest as the nervousness threatened to overwhelm her. She passed a truck, roaring in the opposite direction. It was hardly any comfort that she wasn’t completely alone out there. The emergency alert was still crackling through on the station that was turning to static the further she drove. Jerkily, she turned the radio off altogether. It wasn’t like it was giving any useful information anyways.

A burst of nervous energy had Abby blindly pawing at the passenger seat until she managed to snag up her overstuffed bag, wrenching it upright and slipping her pistol out of the back pouch. She kept it in her lap for a few moments, before setting it carefully in the space between her seat and the parking brake. She couldn’t help but keep reaching down to make sure it was still in place as she drove, making sure it was loose in the holster. The impulse to keep fidgeting with the revolver was finally put in check when she dug out a fresh smoke to have something extra to do with her hands.

What was going on? That was something she could focus on, though she wasn’t expecting to figure out the answer. What she knew was limited to snippets that were hard to remember because she hadn’t really been paying enough attention.

She caught the news in passing only, acknowledging what happened in the wider world and then going on with her life. If it seemed important she’d take a few extra minutes to read up on it, browsing through Facebook for both the far left and far right blurbs that spammed her feed and playing website roulette to find the plainest report on what was happening so she could be informed. When she felt she accomplished that goal, it was back to indifference and the mile-long to-do list that never seemed to get shorter.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the riots and fighting that sprang up. She just didn’t have the time or energy to spend fretting on something that didn’t affect her in any way she could see, especially since she couldn’t even figure out why the riots were happening. What was the cause? What were they fighting for? Was there some injustice that was worth killing for or were these people the ones that just wanted to stir up shit and watch the world crash into the ground? Nothing was clear about the situation and Abby refused to dwell on it any longer than it took to acknowledge that it existed. It was happening somewhere else and even if she wanted to she couldn’t do anything about it. The only reason she knew about the first few riots was because her mom talked about them. Stuck in bed and too weak to get up for more than a short trip to the bathroom, there was nothing to do but watch endless hours of Fox News and get angry at the world at large: her mom always made sure everyone got an earful of what was happening.

It had started snowballing, at some point. It hadn’t taken that long before one or two riots turned into a lot more. It became the only thing anyone was talking about, about how awful and nasty things were turning. It was that time between summer and spring, the point where it was getting hot during the day but the nights were still cool and the spring storms were letting up. The news was always going on about the riots. It was closer, much closer than before because St Louis was only a couple hundred miles away. But still, that was enough of a buffer that she did little more than double check that she had her pistol on her when she left the house, much to the approval of her dad. There was a small chance some of those idiots might manage to make their way down through her part of the state. It seemed highly unlikely – people like that didn’t give a rat’s ass about some small town in Southern Missouri that was hardly more than a blip on a map and a pit stop for people to fuel up as they took the highway to somewhere that actually mattered. There just wasn’t the time or energy to spend getting upset over stupid people doing stupid things in places she never went to.

At that point, it was hard to filter out the truth. Gossip around town was painting it as some sort of cult thing or some new drug that made people go crazy enough to start eating each other. Somewhere along the way the word ‘pandemic’ was thrown in the mix, but Abby couldn’t say where she first heard the word slung out. It all seemed kind of ridiculous, actually. Like a little problem that was getting thrown out of proportion so that people were too occupied to notice some new law they’d probably raise one hell-of-a fuss over.

Abby hadn’t really expected to be steamrolled by the same crazy that she’d been hearing about for months. Just that morning, everything had been fine. She’d come into work, listening to classic rock on the radio and ten short hours later it was like the world had gone up in flames while she wasn’t looking. She might admit that it was a bit delusional to think the violence exploding around the country wouldn’t affect her, but there had already been so many other things that had simply passed her over that she couldn’t really be blamed for thinking that this new insanity would whip by just as easily.

How was it in the course of a day it had devolved to a state-wide evacuation? She had to have missed something critical in the last few days.

One thing was certain in the whole mess. She’d be damned if she was going to just go charging off to shut herself in with thousands of desperate people. That seemed like the stupidest thing to do. If anything, wouldn’t it be smarter to go where there were less people or to stay put and shut themselves in and try to wait it out? That was her plan. She was going to haul her ass back home, board up the windows and barricade the doors before it got any worse, make sure her family was safe and accounted for and ride it out like they always did.

The road was getting rougher. It was less taken care of and she had to slow down quite a bit because the curves were getting sharper, the hills steeper and it was late in the afternoon so she was driving through the deeper shadows of the woods. At some point she might have passed one of the signs for the national forest, but she couldn’t be bothered to care much as she was only concerned about finding the next turnoff.

Sighing, Abby checked that her gun was still in place. Finding it exactly where she knew it would be she reached for her pack of cigarettes, upending what was left of the pack as she fumbled to pull one out without taking her eyes off the road. She let it be, punching in the cigarette lighter forcefully and snatching it up to light the tip of her cigarette, inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in her lungs for a few seconds before blowing out harshly.

It didn’t really matter how it had happened, so much as that it was happening. All she needed to focus on was what was in her control and she was doing exactly what she needed to be doing. Get home, make sure her family was safe, fortify – that was the only thing she had to worry about. They’d figure out the ‘what next’ when it came to it.

There hadn’t been another vehicle since the one truck she had seen and it made her uneasy. It seemed like there should have been others, either heading out to the highway in an attempt to follow the evacuation orders or barreling off in the same direction she was heading, trying to get somewhere else. She had no idea how long the broadcast had been running, so for all she knew everyone throughout these parts had already made whatever move they planned on making.

Didn’t seem likely that there wouldn’t be any stragglers, though.

She almost missed the turnoff for highway 76, having to brake hard to slow down enough to make the sharp left and she didn’t have to check to know her pistol went skidding out of place. She heard the thud, could feel it in the floorboard under her left heel as she stomped down on the clutch.

“Son of a bitch!” Abby took the turn a little too fast, the back of her hatchback fishtailing a bit before she was able to right it. She had to take a few minutes to just breathe as she focused on the road, gripping the steering wheel too tight and forcing herself to keep it slow as this stretch of road was just as gnarly as the last, all blind corners and half-assed patched asphalt.

Another few miles passed quietly, just the drone of the four-cylinder and the whining buzz of the tires pushing along the road. A brief scan of the radio gave her endless static and three stations that were still cycling through the same tired message. It was starting to get dark for real then, no more patches of sun shining through the trees and the colors around her fading to that blue-greyish tone that made it hard to tell everything apart.

Abby saw the crash with plenty of time to roll to a slow stop, the yellow of her headlights shining on the crumpled dually that blocked all of the other lane and most of hers. There wasn’t enough room to eek her car around either side, the edges of the highway giving way to deep ditches and no shoulder to speak of.

“That’s just great,” Abby grunted, jerking the shifter into first and wrenching up the parking break as she cut the engine. A flick and a jiggle of the switch had the overhead light on and she had only just gotten the map in hand when she heard the screaming. Someone was yelling for help from the other side of the flipped truck.

“God damn it.” Abby grabbed her bag up, unlatching her seatbelt and snatching her revolver from the floorboard and stashing back where it belonged. A quick rummage through the bag showed her just how much she wasn’t prepared to help out the victims of a car crash, but a couple of Band-Aids and a sweat-soaked bandana were better than nothing.

The door caught a bit as she shouldered it open, disentangling herself from the seatbelt as she stood. It took another second to lean over and fish the keys out of the ignition so she could use the cheap, dollar-store keychain flashlight.

The yelling was louder once she was out of the car, clearer and she could make out the girls voice. “Help! Please, help us! Help!”

High-pitched and ragged, the voice was young and Abby wondered how long she’d been trapped as she jogged around the upturned diesel to try and get into the cab.

The scene on the other side brought her to a halt because it just wasn’t what she was expecting. It was closer to dark than light, but she could still clearly make out the two kids – teenagers, really – huddled on top of another truck that looked like it had smashed headfirst into the rollover. A man was pressed against the side of the truck, tall and wide and reaching up towards the terrified kids with a single-mindedness that escaped any reasoning she could think of. The way the kids jerked away from his reaching hands told her all she needed to know, that this man was trying to hurt them. She was quick to pull out her gun, cocking back the hammer even as she kept her distance. Another two cars were pulled in behind the wrecked trucks and she could clearly see drivers in both of them just staring at the scene like they had no idea what to do.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Abby demanded, loudly enough that she knew she could be heard and leveling her .38 at the large man. The kids stopped screaming long enough to stare at her for a second before they were hollering again, yelling over each other.

“Don’t let him get close-”

“There’s more of them-”

“-eat you-”

The man stopped pawing at the truck and turned around. He stared blankly at her and Abby could see more people moving jerkily around the other side. Her best guess was that the dark smears on the man’s face was blood and he staggered towards her with the same single-minded determination he’d had when trying to snatch the kids off the top of cab.

“Don’t come any closer.” Abby yelled, but the man kept at her, his stride jittery and uneven. He was groaning – a raw, growling moan from somewhere deep in his chest. Her hands were shaking as she kept her gun aimed at his chest, her heart pounding a fast, damning cadence that made her blood throb. The man didn’t listen, his face blank and showing no signs he even understood what she was shouting as he ambled closer.

“Shoot him!”

“Don’t let them bite you!” It was a new voice added to the fray, a man’s voice coming from somewhere to her right – from one of the cars just idling there. “Don’t let them bite you! That’s how it spreads!”

The man was close now, his arms outstretched towards her like a toddler reaching to be picked up. He was only a couple feet away and Abby fired straight into his torso, the crack of her gun making her ears ring and she flinched at the recoil. She hit him, she knew it. She wasn’t a great shot, but she couldn’t possibly have missed at damn near point blank. But he was still coming and she backed up as she fired again, watching his shoulder jerk at the impact, actually feeling some of the splatter from the shot to his chest. He didn’t go down.

Again she pulled the trigger – and then again. He just kept coming and she only had one shot left. That was four shots to the chest. It shouldn’t have been possible that he was still up, even if he was jacked up on PCP or some shit like that. She felt the asphalt under her feet give way to grass and stopped dead, frantically remembering there was a pretty steep ditch behind her. She could smell him by that point, kind of like a mix of when you opened up the refrigerator after the power had been out for a couple days and the sewage backed up during a flood. He was close enough that she could see the ripped skin on his arms. His stomach was torn open: was there intestines hanging out?

“GET OUT OF THERE! DON’T LET IT BITE YOU!”

Abby surged forward and fired her last shot into his head at point blank, wincing as she felt the splatter hit her face. He finally went down and with him out of the way she could see three more people shuffling towards her with the same, jerky movements. Her gun was empty and there was no way she had time to dig around in her bag to find some extra rounds. Even if she did, there was no way she could make headshots on them unless they were right up on her.

“RUN!”

She skirted around them, absolutely flying as they turned to follow her and she made it to the furthest car in the line. The woman in the driver’s seat reached over to unlock the door of the small hatchback and Abby jerked it open, stopping long enough to watch the three shuffling freaks start back towards the kids that were still crouched on the roof, like they were attracted to the noise of their screaming more than Abby’s quiet getaway.

“Shut your damn mouths!” Abby yelled. The order was followed surprisingly quick. “Keep quiet and wait, and when the coast is clear get to that car! Tell him to follow us!”

Already, her shouting had gotten their attention back, had them shuffling in her direction. She waited for a bit, bellowing endless rounds of, “Hey! Hey, over here assholes!” When they were right up to the nose of the car she threw herself into the passenger’s seat, slamming and locking the door. She didn’t have to give the order, the woman was already turning the key and when the headlights flicked on they saw the teens climbing down the bed of the truck, sprinting to the sedan in front of them. As soon as the car doors slammed closed behind them, they were backing up, a three point turn that knocked over two of the crazies that were still trying to get at them through the window.

“Go. Go, go, go.” Abby urged needlessly. She was shaking, wiping at the gunk on her face and rummaging through her bag to find the little tin she kept spare bullets in. She dropped her gun in the floor board once, cursing and finally getting the revolver open to pull out the spent shells. At least one fresh round ended up lost on the floor before she finally had her pistol reloaded and clutched tightly, resting against a fidgety thigh. Stupidly bright LED headlights flooded them and the road but she still wrenched around to make sure the other car was on their tail. The woman next to her was staring straight ahead at the road, her lips moving wordlessly. She was wearing a pair of scrubs and her dark hair was pulled into a no nonsense ponytail high on her head.

She didn’t look over at Abby when she spoke, “What is – what’s going on?” Her voice was quiet and low, her hands were shaking but she seemed pretty calm for a woman who’d just seen her shoot someone in the head.

“I have no fucking clue.” Abby answered, swallowing hard over that hard knot in the back of her throat, trying to force down the acidic burn and breathing deep through her nose for a while.

“I just got off work and I pulled up and they were trapped up there already. I wanted to help but I just didn’t know – there was a body on the ground. I think they were eating it.” Rachel’s voice pitched up and she cleared her throat. “They were eating a person. They were eating him. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Then, he got up. He got up, even though he was half eaten and he was one of them then. They started trying to get at the kids and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Rumor was that something’s turning people into cannibals. I thought it was a load of bullshit,” Abby said blankly, frantically wiping at her face because it felt sticky. It was supposed to be contagious, right? What if she’d caught it? There were splatters of it on her glasses, dark spots that made it hard to see the road. She pulled them off her face, rubbing them clean with the inside of her shirt.

But mister sedan man seemed to think it was only the bites, had sounded pretty damn sure about it and she hadn’t been bitten, hadn’t let them get close enough. She’d know more when she could talk to him, find out what he knew. “Name’s Abby, by the way.”

“Rachel,” was the delayed response. “Um, it’s nice to meet you I guess?”

Abby couldn’t help but laugh at that. It started out as surprised, silent giggles that turned into loud, obnoxious guffaws that shook her to the core and made her sides ache.

Rachel didn’t say anything after that and Abby kept laughing for a good long while.


	2. The Waiting Game

“Why is he taking so long?”

Diane sighed at the question, but didn’t have an answer. Just like she hadn’t had an answer the first dozen times her mother had asked when an hour had passed and her dad still wasn’t home.

“He shouldn’t be taking this long.” Martha repeated. She was sitting heavily at the dining table, one elbow propped up on the scratched wood and staring out the window hard, like she was trying to make their beat-up pickup truck pull into the drive with the force of her mind. She huffed in irritation, shifting around and turning to stare at Diane. Her head was drooping a bit. She looked tired and pale – gaunt – but that had been the norm for months. Her dark hair was riddled with bright silver strands that had been popping up like crazy and her once thick braid was thinned out. She’d been sick for a long time.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Diane said patiently from her spot on the couch where she was half buried by their Rottweiler. Mae was snoring loudly and sprawled over half the couch with her head resting on Diane’s thigh. “It’s probably just busy. You know how it gets when the power’s out. Everyone rushes to the store to stock up on water and gas.” She didn’t bring up how unusual it was for the power to be out so long when the weather hadn’t been crazy, for the cell network to be down or the fact that every time her mom called the power company on the landline it was busy.

Just like the last time she gave the explanation, Martha scowled. Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by a loud, rumbling engine making its way up the road.

“There he is.” Diane all but rushed out of the family room to get out the door so she could help her dad bring stuff in. She was already out on the porch by the time he came tearing into the driveway, the old Chevy bouncing over the dips and skidding on the dirt.

“You will not believe how crazy that trip was.” Her dad boomed through the open window, voice loud enough to talk over the sputtering truck. He cut the engine and nudged open the squeaky door, muttering under his breath and shaking his head. “I can’t believe it. The store was packed. There had to be twenty people in line when I got there. By the time I got to the register, there were twice that many people.”

Diane nodded that she was listening as she pried open the toolbox in the bed of the truck. There was a single gallon of water and a sixteen pack of smaller bottles, two cartons of cigarettes and single bag with some rice and a quarter-gallon jug of milk.

“There was hardly anything there.” Dave said in explanation, scratching at his beard. “I was lucky to get what I did. Town and Country was the only place still open. The power’s out all over. I couldn’t even get gas.”

“That sucks.” Diane lamented, grabbing the water up and leaving the cigarettes, rice and milk for him to bring in. She bustled in the door, using her heel to hold it open as her dad came in behind her. They dropped everything on one of the kitchen counters, Mae bustling into the kitchen in excitement and generally getting in the way.

“Oh my god! What happened?”

Diane whipped around at her mom’s shrill voice coming from the doorway to the kitchen. Martha was leaning against the door frame, staring hard at her husband. Diane followed the gaze and finally noticed the blood staining the sleeve of her dad’s shirt.

“Someone bit me.” He frowned. “It was the damnedest thing. I was heading back home and there was this gal just standing in the middle of the road. I almost ran her over. When I got out of the truck to see if she needed help she just charged up to me and took a bite out of my arm. She really latched on. I had to throw her off. Fuckin’ tweakers.”

Diane was already at the hall closet where they kept the medical supplies, grabbing some bandages and antibiotic cream. She dumped them off on the table before rushing to the bathroom to find some hydrogen peroxide.

“Oh my god!” Her mom’s voice was shrill and loud. “We’re taking you to the hospital!”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” Her dad growled back. “It’s just a scratch.”

Diane knew better, knew her dad was underplaying it by a lot and was already pointedly pulling out a chair for him.

“Mouths are dirty. We need to clean it out.” It took a few seconds of staring him down before he sat down, grumbling the entire time. She made quick work of unbuttoning and rolling up his sleeve, wincing at the deep, jagged chunk that was missing from the meat of his forearm. It was bleeding heavily enough that a steady stream was running down onto the table.

“I think you really do need to go to the hospital.” She said sternly, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference. Her dad was stubborn.

“No. We need to stay home.” He took off the wide-brimmed felt hat he always wore, smoothing back some strands of hair that had escaped from his braid. Using his good hand, he started petting Mae when the Rottweiler put her head on his leg. “It’s crazy out there right now. I was talking to some people when I was waiting in line – cellphones aren’t working, the power’s out for the entire county at least. Someone said they’d started evacuating some counties up north. We need to find a radio.”

“I’ll find one.” Martha volunteered, slowly making her way down the hallway to the back room they used for storage. They could hear her rummaging around, something loud thudding against the floor.

“You okay?” Diane hollered, ripping open a package of gauze and twisting the cap off the hydrogen peroxide.

“Fine. Just knocked over a box. I found one! We need eight AAs.”

“Check my workroom.” Dave called back.

Diane turned her attention back to getting her dad’s arm cleaned up, pouring good amount of disinfectant over the gaping wound. The peroxide washed away the blood enough for her to clearly see the jagged tooth marks overlaying each other – like he’d been gnawed on.

“She got you good.”

“She was out of her mind on drugs.”

Diane made quick work of getting the bite cleaned up, coating it with a very thick layer of the antibiotic cream and a thick layer of gauze, wrapping more gauze around his thick forearm to keep it in place. “We’re going to have to keep a close eye on that.”

Her dad gave no acknowledgement to that, but she wasn’t sure if that was because she was trying to ‘baby’ him or because her mom had finally come back with a small rectangular radio and a half-pack of batteries.

“I only found four.”

“I’ll get some.” Diane offered, helping her mother sit down at the table before heading through the kitchen and to the stairs. Upstairs, it took her ten minutes to scrounge another four AA batteries out of her sister’s room, knowing Abby wouldn’t mind having her secret stash raided.

Back downstairs she popped the batteries into the blocky radio and angled the antenna towards the window. It was a dial tuner, so it took some time before she got it to one of the local stations she knew.

It was mostly static, but she got it to clear up by moving the radio right over to the window, sticking the antenna out through a hole in the screen in time to hear, “…is in effect for the state of Missouri. All residents are encouraged to make their way to the nearest safe-zone. Refuges have been set up in St. Louis, Jefferson City, Springfield, and Poplar Bluff. This is not a test. Please evacuate to the nearest safe-zone immediately. A state-wide evacuation is in effect for the states of Missouri.” The message ended and was replaced with that god-awful tone she’d only ever heard when they were testing the emergency alert system.

She stared at her parents, and they stared back blankly as they listened to the message repeat itself.

“Well, that was informative.” Her dad snorted. “Find another station, something that’ll actually tell us what’s going on.”

She quickly did just that. But every station she tuned in to was broadcasting the same damn thing. Nervously, she turned down the volume on the message and sat down at the table with her parents. “We aren’t going anywhere. Abby is going to come here. You know she will.”

Her parents only nodded.

“We’ve talked about this before. If something goes wrong, we’re all supposed to meet back here and stay together. She’s the only one out of the house right now. She’ll come home and we’ll figure out what to do when she gets here. She might have a better idea of what’s going on.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince more, her parents or herself.

For a long time, they sat at the table and simply listened to the radio play the same thing over and over.

“I do have a little fuel set back.” Her dad broke in. “I could get the generator running for a bit. Just enough to get the well pump running so we can fill up some containers with extra water.”

Diane was immediately on her feet. “I’ll see what I can find to fill up while you do that.”

Dave pushed himself up from the table, grunting and bowing forward in pain with a hand on his back. He waited for it to pass before heading out to the garage. Diane wasted no time rifling through the kitchen, pulling down pitchers and big mason jars from up in the cupboards. There was an empty milk jug she could use and a near empty soda bottle she quickly dumped out. She could see her dad walking across the driveway towards the garage.

“This has to be about those terrorists.” Martha came into the kitchen with a couple of reusable water bottles, setting them on the counter. She had to lean there for a while to steady herself.

“You should go lay down.” Diane said quietly.

Her mom ignored her. “They’ve probably gone and blown up a substation or something. I’ve been saying something like this was going to happen. It’s been getting worse for weeks.”

Diane tuned her mother out, finishing her search for more water-tight containers. Whatever was happening was serious, if there was a state-wide evacuation. They didn’t evacuate people for power outages.

“I’m going to find something we can fill up to use in the toilets.” She disappeared into the laundry room, finding an empty laundry-soap container that hadn’t made it into the trash. There was also an empty kitty-litter jug and she snatched that up as well.  She poked her head out the door to check where her dad was. The garage door was open, and he was pouring fuel into the generator.

After that it didn’t take long to get a good stock of water. It wasn’t much, not in the long-run but it was enough to last them a few days if they were careful with it. Dave was certain there was enough fuel for a couple hours if they were only running the well pump.

After that, there really wasn’t much else to do. Martha finally went to lie down after she almost fell down. Diane had to help her into bed and she was out like a light within a few minutes. Her dad was in the living room, sprawled out in his recliner and he’d moved the radio to his side table. He was flipping through the whole range of stations and having no luck finding anything other than the same message that had been playing since the start.

“It’s FM only,” Dave growled. “Piece of shit. We got another one that does AM too?”

“I’ll look.” Diane told him. “We also need candles.”

She ended up looking by herself, shifting through moldy boxes and drawers in the back room. It was stuffy in the back room and her hair kept slipping out from her hair tie and sticking to her forehead. She found a few candles stashed back there, those stupid scented pretty ones that were carved into shapes and given as chintzy gifts. They were a good find now, icing on the cake because they had a good stash of the cheap, regular candles as well. She did find another radio, but they certainly didn’t have enough D-cell batteries to get it going. There might have been a couple in one of the Maglite’s but she was also certain that saving the flashlights was going to be more important.

Her dad was sleeping when she came back out, head leaned back and mouth hanging open. He was snoring slightly and there was a coat of sweat on his head. It was a bit warm in the house, so Diane deposited the candles on the kitchen table and opened the other window. Then, she clicked off the radio so her dad wouldn’t be disturbed while he was resting and slipped back into his workroom where the house phone was.

Her cellphone wasn’t working, no matter how many times she dialed Abby’s number. It wouldn’t dial out when she tried to call her cousin either. She tried Abby on the landline and got some prerecorded operator message about the call not being completed as dialed. She tried her cousin’s cellphone again with the landline and got the same results. She tried calling her aunt and uncle’s home phone and it just kept ringing. It never went to the answering machine. That meant they didn’t have power either. They didn’t have one of the older, plain phones for their landline, just those remote phones that wouldn’t work if the power was out.

Diane stared at her phone screen for a few minutes, just staring at the time. It was just getting to be 5:00. Abby was supposed to work until then, but if things were going crazy there was no way she’d stay at work, right? She ought to have been home already.

She couldn’t help the tears that were building up on her, no matter how hard she blinked. What if she wasn’t okay? What if – she had no clue what was going on out there, what kind of trouble her sister could be in. What if she didn’t make it home?

“Honey?” Her dad’s voice croaked and she jumped. It took her a minute to wipe away the tears and take a few breaths to try and calm herself.

“Yeah dad?”

“Could you bring me some water?”

Diane watched him for a few minutes, watched the sweat that was actually dripping down the sides of his face by then. It wasn’t _that_ hot in there.

“One second.” Instead of going to the kitchen, she headed for the bathroom. The thermometer was in the medicine cabinet and her father was surprisingly docile when she insisted on checking his temperature. A couple minutes later the little electronic beep went off and she took the thermometer to the window so she could read the little digital screen.

103.2 was one hell of a fever.

Immediately, she went to the freezer and grabbed up some frozen vegetables and the ice trays that were starting to melt. The ice was still mostly solid and the vegetables were only barely starting to get mushy. She wrapped the veggies up in towels until there were three little cold packs and took them back to her dad. One went behind his neck and she made him shove one under each armpit. Some ice went into a glass that she topped to the brim with water. Another went into a mixing bowl. She mixed in enough water to make it kind of soupy before taking those out to her dad.

“Drink as much as you can. It’ll help get your core temperature down a bit. I need to take your boots off.”

He took the glass of water, sputtering and choking a bit as he sipped it while Diane worked on the laces of his boots. It was tough to tug them off his permanently swollen legs, but she managed to get them free and peeled off his socks. She nabbed a few washcloths from the linen closet and started dipping them in the ice bowl, soaking them in the frigid water and laying them across his skin. His fever needed to drop fast.

He’d only sipped a little of the water and the glass was tipping in his hand. Diane righted it, helping him to drink some more. “As much as you can.”

Dave did as he was told.

Watching closely, it was apparently his breathing was too heavy, the collar of his shirt was soaked and she was ninety percent certain that it was sweat and not the water from the makeshift ice-packs.

She didn’t know what to do.

Stumbling to her feet, she nearly ran to get back to the phone. Shaking fingers dialed 9-1-1 and she held the receiver up to her ear. The prerecorded voice told her that all operators were busy and to please wait. Another minute and the same thing happened. Then again. And again. She didn’t actually count how many times she listened to that prerecorded robot voice, wasn’t sure exactly how long she was waiting but it was starting to get dark outside and there was still no answer.

“Fuck you!” She swore into the phone, slamming it back down into the receiver and going back to her dad. There was no help out there. She was on her own.

Her dad was still, his breath rattling in his chest and he wasn’t responding.

“Dad? Dad?” She scrambled for the thermometer, had to pry his mouth open so she could take his temperature again. It was the longest two minutes of her life while she waited for the beep and belatedly rushed to get some candles lit so she’d be able to read the results. She’d gotten the third one lit by the time she heard the tiny beep. Holding her breath, she pulled it out of her father’s mouth and angled it so she could read it by candle-light.

106.9.

“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit!” She screamed, going in a frantic circle. She had to do something, she had to get his body temperature under control. His brain was probably cooking. She upended the mostly melted ice water over him, yelping as it splashed back on her. Her dad didn’t even flinch at the shock and she sobbed. She bolted back to the freezer, finding anything that was still hard and icy to the touch and dragging it back to the living room.

“Diane? What’s wrong?” Her mom’s voice was groggy, like she had just woken up.

“He’s dying. H-his fever – it’s too high. I can’t get it down.”

“Call an ambulance!”

“I tried! You don’t think I tried! I was on hold for ages and when I came back he was up to 106. He’s- I can’t- I don’t know what else to do!” She was shoving half-frozen vegetables into his shirt, his pants, anywhere she could get them. A rock-hard pork roast got wedged behind him and soon there was a second pair of hands helping her, shoving anything remotely cold into contact with his skin.

“Honey.” Her mom’s voice was timid. “I don’t – is he still breathing?”

Diane snatched up a candle, holding it over her dad where he was perfectly still in the chair, lumpy with freezer food and sopping wet. She stared hard at his chest, holding her own breath. She watched, she waited.

She had to breathe long before she gave up watching, waiting. His chest didn’t move. There was no rattle in his chest, no air coming out his nose or mouth. She felt around his neck, but no matter how long she searched there was no pulse to be found.

“He’s – he’s dead.” Diane whispered, her hand still pressed against her dad’s neck, fingers still searching. She was shaking, the hand holding the candle unsteady and hot wax was splashing down on him. On his dead body.

Martha wailed and Diane watched through burning eyes as her mother collapsed into a heap of violent, wracking sobs.


	3. Fuel for Thought

“I’m almost out of gas.”

Rachel’s voice startled Abby. It was the first the woman had spoken since her minor breakdown into hysteria. Abby herself hadn’t said a word except, “Drive around them,” when they came across another one of the stumbling cannibal people wandering in the road.

“We’ll have to stop then.” Abby said. “Find some.”

“Think a gas station will even be open?” Rachel asked.

“Have to try.” Was all Abby could suggest. She hadn’t been paying too much attention, but she thought they might have passed one of those signs that said a town was coming up in a few miles.

It was really dark. They’d been driving for nearly an hour, slow and steady, but she hadn’t seen a single light anywhere they passed. Even the houses that were scattered about weren’t lit up. No floodlights, no windows glowing. Nothing. The power was out.

There were a few more houses on the road, closer together and Abby was watching closely as they passed through a half-assed attempt at a town, coming up on a gas station that was just as dark as everywhere else they’d passed.

“What now?" Rachel asked, slowing almost to a stop as she leaned over to stare at the darkened building.

“Pull in. Won’t hurt to check.” Abby answered shortly and Rachel did just that. The sedan that had been following them pulled to a stop as well, staying out of the small pull-around and idling in the middle of the street.

It was one of those back-woods gas stations that made outsiders think of horror movies, one’s with those old single-stall pumps and white-washed metal siding. There were signs for beer and bait, some local made jerky and a ‘beware of owner’ warning sign. A truck was pulled in on the side of the store and Abby hoped that meant someone was manning the place, even if the power was out. It wasn’t like life just stopped when the electricity cut out, after all.

“I’ll go check if anyone’s in there.” Abby said, and her voice was even despite the fact that her heart was already trying to spring out of her chest. She barely hesitated before unlocking the door and swinging it open, though she did freeze just as soon as the sounds from outside caught up to them without the sound of the engine blocking them out.

Faint, distant – those were gunshots. Abby strained her ears, breath hitching. There was a long minute of silence before more were heard. They were coming from somewhere off to her right, a good distance away but not so far as to not scare her after everything she’d seen that night.

“We’ll make this quick.” Abby muttered, floundering for a minute on what to do with her pistol. Last thing she wanted was to get shot or arrested for armed robbery or something. Feeling stupid, she snatched her bag out of the floorboards and slipped the pistol down the back pouch, draping over her shoulder but decided against that, instead pulling it back out and taking the time to find the holster. She had to struggle to clip it onto the band of her cargo pants because she wasn’t wearing a belt, but once it was there her gun slid easily into place. She didn’t both tucking her shirt over it.

A glance up showed Rachel watching her stoically before she turned away from the safety of the car and walked slowly towards the darkened store front. The brightness of the headlights was the only thing lighting the area. She hesitated before bracing herself and pulling the handle.

The door rattled, but didn’t budge. Locked.

“Hello?” Abby knocked lightly on the door, cupping her hands to the glass and sticking her face close to try and see past the blurred reflection shining off the glass. “Anyone in there?”

There was someone, moving around one of the shelves with slow jerking strides that made her want to run, but that wasn’t fair. For all she knew it was just a limp. It was just a limp, but no matter how she told herself she was still watching the jerky motions with growing fear as the person got closer, bee-lining straight for where she was pressed against the door and walking face-first into it. She leapt back, pulling her pistol as she backed away from the door and the smears of blood getting spread across the glass from the man that was trying to bite at her. The door rattled with each movement, and she turned in a tight circle to scan all around the area before she made her way back to the still open car door.

“We have to find somewhere else.” Abby huffed, shutting the door firmly and making sure it was locked. “There was one of them in there.”

“I won’t make it far – do you know how far it is to the next gas station?”

“Doesn’t have to be a gas station – just find some place with a few cars that’s kind of open. We’ll get gas that way.”

Rachel didn’t say anything to that, just obediently pulled out of the small parking lot and turned back on the main road.

“I’m going through your stuff.” Abby warned before she found the lever to drop the back of the seat into a laying position and started crawling into the back seat. Rachel didn’t question her motives at all. Maybe she was in shock.

Regardless, Abby flicked on her dinky flashlight and started fishing around in the back seat.

It was very clean, which made it much easier to determine that there wasn’t anything useful there. Further back in the little SUV was just as neat and a little more fruitful. There was a little emergency roadside kit that had a couple of flares and a little first-aid kit. There was a bottle jack, with one of those separate handles that might make a good impromptu weapon if needed. Same with the four-way lug wrench, though it would be awkward.

“Might be wishful thinking, but I don’t suppose you carry a gun or have a machete or ax stashed somewhere back here?” Abby questioned as she moved her way back up to the passenger seat with her small pile of loot.

Rachel laughed weakly. “No. I don’t – my husband always harps on me for it. I have a .45 at my place, but I don’t carry it. Never have.”

Abby nodded. “Hope the man back there has something.”

Rachel shook her head and it was only the continued over-bright of the LED lights shining through the back window that allowed Abby to spot the movement before she turned her eyes back to watch where they were going.

“There. Right there where those trucks are parked.” It was a small church and there were three trucks in the parking lot, a small beat up car rolled up on the curb. “We’ll check those for gas.”

“We’re going to steal someone else’s gas?” But she was slowing to a stop regardless.

“If these people were still around to need it, they’d probably be gone already.” Abby said brusquely, though she wasn’t entirely convinced of that. They could just as easily be holed up in that church right there. She wasn’t going to dwell on it too hard. “Don’t pull into the lot. Just stop on the road. If it’s bad we want to be able to get on the road fast.”

The car stopped completely, the engine cutting out as Rachel turned off the ignition. “Do you have a decent flashlight?”

“Glove box.” Rachel answered shortly.

“Right.” Abby popped open the vinyl compartment, snatching up the little flashlight there and clicking the button to test it. It was much brighter than her dinky little keychain. “Good. You waiting here or…?”

“I’ll come with you. It’s my car, I should help.”

“Awesome.” Abby passed over the lever from the jack. “It’ll work as a whacking stick. Sort of.”

The woman stared at her, dark eyes wide and scared. She took the bar, her hand shaking but she didn’t hesitate before unlocking the door and swinging it open. Abby was out a second later, revolver at the ready.

“What are you doing?” The sedan was pulled up right behind them, those damn headlights still on.

“Cut the lights. Jesus-fucking-Christ!” Abby snapped. “We need gas.”

The headlights went off a second later and it took several seconds of furious blinking to get her eyes somewhat adjusted. She could see the partially rolled down window and approached the driver’s door so she wouldn’t have to shout.

“You seem to have an idea of what’s happening.” Abby stated bluntly.

“I watch the news,” was the short, clipped answer. “They’re everywhere. I was trying to get to the quarantine zone in Springfield. They’ve set up a safe-zone. We need to find a way to get there.”

“But what’s happening? I mean – what exactly is going on with these people? Why are they…” She waved a hand at nothing, hoping it got the message across.

“I don’t know. All I know is what I saw on the news before the power went out this morning. People are infected with something, something that turns them crazy. They just attack anything that moves, start eating anything they can get a hold of. Animals, people – they’ll eat them. They were warning people to quarantine anyone who got a bite or scratch from one of them. That’s all I know.”

Abby scowled. That was hardly anything, but she didn’t want to waste any more time trying to wheedle information out of him. If he did know something else he’d share it eventually.

“We have to get to the refuge.” He repeated and that had Abby rolling her eyes.

“There’s no way in hell I’m going someplace with that many people when there’s some sort of super rabies going around turning people into feral cannibals. Could you imagine that clusterfuck? Plus, there ain’t no way in hell they’d let us have any weapons in a refugee camp. We’d just be sitting there, surrounded by thousands of people. What happens if they miss someone? What if it breaks out there? I’d rather take my chances out in the boonies where there’s only a few of them.”

“They’re probably screening people.” The man argued. Abby didn’t answer him, instead leaning to the side a bit and speaking into the car. “You kids doing okay? You hurt?”

There was silence for a few second, and a quiet voice finally floated back to her, “They ate our mom.”

Abby swallowed. She had no idea what in the seven hells she was supposed to say to that. There wasn’t anything to say to that. Instead, she nodded at Rachel and crept towards the parking lot where there would hopefully be a jackpot of gasoline.

“What do you think?”

Rachel didn’t respond immediately and for a moment Abby didn’t think she would.

“I think I’d like to stick with you, if that’s okay.”

 Abby kept quiet for a bit after that, slowly making her way around the unmoving vehicles to make sure it was clear. She didn’t see anything moving. Quickly, she started scanning the first truck-bed for a gas can or something she could use to ferry fuel the short distance to Rachel’s rig.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why do you want to stick with me?” Abby asked patiently, stepping up on a tire to get a good view into the bed of the one-ton. “Not that I’m saying I won’t take you along where I’m going. Just – why?”

“Oh. You seem... I get the impression you know what you’re doing.” Rachel explained.

“I don’t.” Abby answered quickly, jumping back to the ground after surveying the empty truck-bed. There might be something in the cab, but it was a newer truck and she didn’t want to set off the alarm and make that sort of noise. She did take a second to flip back the flap on the gas-tank and make sure the cap read ‘unleaded fuel only.’ The next truck was a Chevy, probably a late nineties model and almost identical to one of the junkers her dad had sitting in the yard with a blown engine.

There was a bunch of crap in the bed. A lot of crumbled tree bark, pieces of barbed-wire, and a couple chunks of plywood. Nuzzled in the corner of the bed was a dinky little one gallon gas can that sloshed when she picked it up. She wasn’t going to put it in the car though, because it was up next to a chainsaw and was probably laced with two-stroke oil. It wasn’t much of a waste, though. A half-gallon wouldn’t have gotten them far anyways. But it did give them something to siphon fuel into if they could find a tube that was long enough.

The flashlight reflected off the window too much to see inside, but Abby was pretty certain the cab was clear. The door was stiff, creaky and she winced at it. Jackpot – there was another gas-can in the floorboard. It was empty, but the five-gallon-can would mean a lot less back and forth once they got at the fuel.

Some more rummaging got her a half-pack of cheap cigarettes that found a new home in her pocket and a hunting knife moved from the dash to her pocket. There might have been more, but it was hard to tell with the heaps of trash and the empty soda-cans were making too much noise for her comfort.

“Can I help?”

Abby jumped, already whipping around to point her gun at the unexpected voice at the front of the truck, jerking it off line just as soon as she saw the lanky boy standing there with his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

The kid lifted his chin, defiant and shook his slightly too long hair out of his face. “You’re supposed to be paying attention. It’s not my fault you weren’t doing your job.”

Abby snorted, “It’s not like you can talk considering you were trapped on top of a truck and screaming like a girl.”

“That was my sister!”

“Keep your voice down.” Rachel hissed. “Both of you.”

Abby sucked in a breath, irritation still hot and heavy in her chest. Her voice was barely above a whisper, “We don’t need help. Go back to the car.”

“You’re not the boss of me. Besides, the cranky guy sent me out here to tell you two to hurry up. He wants to get back on the road.”

Abby forced a deep breath, but ignored the brat as she set the pilfered gas tank on the ground and headed for the last truck still in the parking lot. It was a small one, and there wasn’t anything in the bed except a few dead leaves and cigarette butts. She went to open the door and stumbled back in shock when something slammed against the window. She lifted her gun and fired, the bang echoing and the glass shattering. High pitched yelping cut through the sudden silence afterwards and Abby shone the light into the cab. There was a god damned Yorkshire in the cab, trembling at the far end of the seat and completely unharmed.

Unless scared to death counted as harmed – then they were both in pretty bad shape, she’d guess. Her heart was racing so fast from the scare she was surprised she was still conscious, in all honesty.

The dog had been in there for a while. She could smell the shit and piss. Abby didn’t give it another glance as she headed back towards the biggest truck in the lot, snatching up the gas tank on the way. She purposely didn’t look at Rachel or the little snot nose as she dropped to the ground under the truck, tucking her gun into the holster at her waist. She hadn’t found a hose or anything to stick down in the gas-tank to try and siphon out the gas, so she was going to have to get the fuel some other way. The big truck was tall enough, had a lift-kit. There was enough room to slide the can under it if she removed the nozzle. Once it was there, she took the knife and started sawing at the fuel line that led from the gas cap to the tank.

It took a couple minutes and she got a face full of gasoline, but soon the hollow, thud-splash echoing in the container made it all worth it.

She heard footsteps and peaked out from the car to shine the light where they were coming from. So that was Mr. Sedan Man, huh? He was kind of pudgy, the pits of his button up shirt were soaked through and his half-bald head was sopping wet. There was someone else behind him, a girl that might have been fifteen or so. She looked awkward, all gangly and thin and her she blond hair looked fried from too much hair dye and hot irons. She had her arms crossed tightly across her chest and remained silent as she wandered straight past, probably towards wherever her brother was lingering.

“What is taking so long?” Mr. Sedan Man demanded.

“I’m sorry. I left my professional gas stealing kit at home. Have to improvise and that takes longer.” Abby snapped back.

“This is pointless. I’ve got room in my car – let’s just go.”

“Problem is, we’re not going to the same place.” Abby turned the flashlight back to the gas can, humming in approval that the gas was still coming steady. Someone had a full tank before she got to it, otherwise it wouldn’t be letting off as much as it was.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to go hole up at a refugee camp. I am going home. You see where that’s a problem?” She slid out from under the truck enough to sit up. “We’re fine right now. We’re almost done. Stop fretting.”

“If we’re fine, why did you shoot?”

Abby winced. “Thought it there was a feral in the truck.”

“It’s a dog.” The boy was yelling, though she supposed it was far too late to worry about keeping quiet after she had already made so much noise by literally jumping the gun.

“Get back over here. Don’t go wandering off on your own like that!” Abby yelled back. “We’re still in the middle of a crisis, you know?”

She didn’t get a response, but thought she might have heard him grumbling, “…not the boss of me.”

“Brat.” She ducked under the truck, nudging the can and dragging it back out since there was plenty of weight to it. It was maybe three-quarters full, but the flow of gas was slowing way down and it wouldn’t be worth the time it would take to catch the last dregs of what was leaking out. It would have to do.

She twisted the nozzle back on, heaving to her feet and clenching the flashlight in her teeth so she could use both hands on the heavy can. A glance showed the two kids waiting halfway back towards the car, that stupid little Yorkshire cradled in the boys arms and she’d have words with him about responsibility and strays at some point, but she was more concerned with the loping, ambling figures she could just barely make out coming up from the opposite side of the street where they were parked.

“Fuck.” She tried to say, but the flashlight was still in her mouth and it came out more like a really breathy, “huck.”

Mr. Sedan Man was still scowling at her, but Rachel had followed her gaze and was whimpering quietly beside her. Abby pushed the gas can towards her, pressing it into her gut until she took it. With her hand free, she was able to spit out the flashlight and draw her revolver. “Right. So… I guess I’ll keep them off your back while you fill her up?”

Rachel nodded and Mr. Sedan Man finally noticed the creepers getting closer. He squeaked, and went running back to his car.

“Wait!”

He was already there, was trying to pry open the nearest handle but he must have locked himself out and they were closing in on him. The kids were rushing back towards her, slipping behind her and Rachel when they’d crossed the short distance even as Mr. Sedan Man gave up on his car and started running back down the road. The ambling menaces were following him, both of them. A shuffling behind them made Abby whip around and there was another one ambling out from around the side of the church.

“Go. Get in the car.” She pushed the kids towards Rachel’s hatchback and started nudging her along to. “Get the gas in the tank. I’ve got your back. Get as much in as you can.”

She stayed back, steeling herself and marching straight towards the creepy, feral little beasty that was groaning with the same guttural sounds the other had made. It raised its arms as she got closer, and it took every ounce of steel in her blood to close the distance enough to put her pistol to its head and pull the trigger. It went down with the first bullet and it was only after it worked that she realized she would have been shit-out-of-luck if it hadn’t because she’d been right up in the its grasp.

“Lady! Hey! There’s more of them!”

Abby turned back to the car, and that little snot was still outside the car. Rachel was pouring the gas, craning her neck in every direction as she struggled to keep the gas can tilted up enough.

The boy was pointing off to her left and another two were coming from the side of the building. Fuck.

“How you doing on that gas, Rachel?”

“Half done!” Rachel called back.

A third one emerged and Abby started backing towards the car. “Stash it in the car. We need to leave.”

There was another one and as she scanned she could see at least two more moving in. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She didn’t have enough bullets for this shit.

“We’re good!” Rachel called and Abby sprinted back to the car, slamming herself in the passenger seat even as the car started up. The tires squealed as Rachel flipped the car around.

“What are you doing?” Abby hollered, a death-grip on the oh-shit bar bolted above the door.

“We can’t just leave him!” Rachel snapped.

“He left us first! And now he’s right there getting munched on like stale popcorn so it’s too late and we need to turn around right now or we’re never going to get somewhere safe. So please, please, please turn us the fuck around and get us out of here.” Abby gasped in a breath after the plea, staring straight ahead at what was left of Mr. Sedan Man getting shredded by three ferals, gagging as they buried their faced to his torn up gut. Rachel flipped around again, hard and fast and she almost hit one of the beasts when she ran up on the curb before she righted the car out and they were tearing off. There were more of them wandering out by then, at least a dozen and they were all shuffling on with the same, mindless purpose that they all seemed to have.

The car lurched forward and within a few seconds the ferals were all out of sight, but certainly not out of mind as they raced off down the dark highway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Updates happen every Tuesday.


	4. Bump in the Road

“I don’t suppose either of you’ve heard anything about all this?” Abby asked just as soon as she’d caught her breath back enough to talk without gasping. If this sort of franticness was going to turn into the norm, it was probably time to kick her smoking habit. Even thinking it had her twitching to light up, had her pulling the scavenged pack of cigarettes out from her pocket and feeling around her pockets for a lighter. Damn it all if she didn’t have one.

“We’ve got a can of gas in the car.” Rachel blurted suddenly, turning her head just long enough to stare her down and get the point across.

Abby wanted to argue that they could keep the windows down, that gasoline wasn’t actually some hair-trigger explosive that ignited if you so much as breathed wrong but it wasn’t her car and the simple truth of the matter was she probably didn’t need to be putting any more stress on her lungs when she had no idea how much running she was going to have to do. Instead she stuffed the pack back into her pocket and turned around in her seat to stare at the two kids as best she could in the dark.

They were huddled together, the rescued Yorkshire pressed in between them.

“I’ll take that as a no?” Abby said after she’d been staring them down for a couple minutes and not gotten a response. More silence was all she got. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me your names at least?”

Finally, the boy spoke. “You first.”

Little shit. Abby snorted, but decided it wasn’t worth raising a fuss. “Abby. This lovely lady behind the wheel is Rachel.

It took another few second before he answered. “Ryan. This is my sister, Chelsea.”

“I’d say nice to meet you, but I think we’d all be liars if we didn’t admit that we’d rather have everything normal with no reason for us to cross paths in the first place.” Since the boy was willing to talk, Abby chose to keep questioning him. “Did that guy you were with say anything to you guys about all this shit?”

“He asked if we’d been bitten, told us that’s how people get infected. Mostly he was just muttering about needing to get to the safe zone and cussing a whole lot ‘cause we were going the wrong way.”

“So we got nothing more than we had.” Abby reached out for the stereo, clicking over from the cd it was playing to scan through the FM stations. There was nothing more that she was expecting, still just the same emergency alert that had been playing for hours.

“Any of you want to listen to this all the way through?”

There was no answer from the back seat and Rachel just gave a jerky shake of her head and flexed her fingers against the steering wheel. Abby dropped the volume all the way down, sighing heavily as her chest tightened up at the uncertainty. Instead of letting it overwhelm her or giving in to the growing urge to light up, she started recapping what she knew for their benefit.

“Didn’t know anything was wrong until I got off work and all I got was that emergency broadcast. The main highway was backed up, forty mile out from Springfield and I decided to find a different way home. Don’t know much, but I think this shit has been building up for a while now – been seeing shit on the news, people were talking about it but I didn’t hear anything about the biting thing.” She paused, considering. And cocking her head towards Rachel. “What do you think? This seem like some sort of disease to you?”

“I have no idea.” Rachel answered after a moment. “I’ve been working all day – I don’t get service out here and I can’t stand Country music so I never listen to the radio. I didn’t even know anything was wrong until I pulled up on that wreck.”

Abby nodded, “I was more interested in your professional opinion.”

Rachel snorted. “I’m a cleaning lady.”

“What?”

“It’s the uniform. People always assume I’m a nurse. I work for an in-home care company. My job is to go house to house to clean for people who can’t do it for themselves.

“Ah.” Abby drawled. “Done some house cleaning before. Hated it, but broke is broke.”

“Better than food service though”

“Hear, hear.”

There was silence for another long stretch.

“Where are we going anyways?” Ryan asked suddenly.

Abby looked over to Rachel but the other woman just shrugged. “I’m going home.” Abby answered. “This highway leads right to my town. If you guys want to keep going from there, that’s fine. If you want to stick with me, that’s fine too.”

She looked over to Rachel again. “You going to try and get to your husband?”

“No point.” Rachel said quietly. “He’s deployed and all my family is in Texas.”

Abby nodded, not certain that Rachel could see. She turned in the seat again to look back at Ryan and Chelsea. The girl had her knees pulled up to her chest, her face buried and Abby hesitated before asking, “You two have other family?”

Ryan shook his head, arms clenching tighter around the tiny dog until the thing was squirming. “It was just us and mom. Dad never came home from work last night and this morning when mom woke us up she was packing, said we were going to Springfield. She wouldn’t say what happened but one of dad’s buddies from work was there, was telling her that he’d meet us up there. They got her when she was going to see if our neighbor needed to come with us.

“You two get in the truck and go, then?”

“Yeah,” Ryan whispered, “Chelsea has her permit.”

“That was smart of you.” Abby said carefully. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

Whatever reply might have come was erased by Rachel screaming and slamming on the brakes, squealing tires drowning out everything else as something crashed into the windshield.

The car came to a jarring stop half off the road, the front end smashing heavily into hard packed dirt at the bottom of one of the ditches that lined the highway. For a long while, there were no other sounds than the creaks and groans of settling metal and the heavy breathing of the occupants. Abby whined, pinched tight by the seatbelt and struggling to get a full breath with the strap locked so tight across her chest. Her heart was pounding hard and heavy in her ears.

“Is everyone okay?” She gasped out, bracing her feet on the floor and sliding up in her seat to try and gain some breathing room, hands clawing uselessly at the seatbelt release.

Someone else moaned, a wet sound that was just as much a gurgle and she really hoped that no one had internal bleeding because she just didn’t know how to handle something like that.

“We’re fine.” Came Ryan’s voice from behind her and Abby flopped her head over to the side to look over at Rachel in the driver’s seat. The headlights were out, either smashed or smothered by the dirt they were ploughed into, but there was still a faint red glow seeping into the car from the tail-lights and she could see the other woman bent forward and unmoving on the puffed up airbag.

“Rachel?”

Another deep groan, but it wasn’t from Rachel and Abby struggled to press herself further into the seat away from the dash where a writhing body was speared through the glass and starting to move and struggle in earnest, lurching forward into the car and ignoring the glass that was digging into it’s flesh.

“Fuck.” Abby felt around her waist, still struggling to get the button for the seatbelt latch to release. The feral was inching it’s way further through the windshield and she had to give up on the seatbelt to wrench her .38 out of her holster. Her hands were shaking, but she managed to level the gun enough, breath catching as she squeezed the trigger.

The shot didn’t crack so much as it boomed and it was like a blow directly to her eardrums. It was sharp, overwhelming – it left her reeling and she couldn’t do anything for a long moment but press her hands over her ears and wait for it to stop with clenched teeth. It was a slow crawl back to manageable, the throbbing deep in her ears turning back down to a hard buzz and she could hear someone crying, muffled and faded.

It took another wait before she could get her thoughts clear enough to focus.

The creeper was dead, slumped and unmoving but she was starting to be able to hear the hood denting like something was moving on top of it.

“We have to get out of here.” Abby slurred, unsure if it was her words that were slow and sluggish or just how she was hearing them. She was still stuck by the seatbelt, but managed to find the lever to drop her seat back and get enough room to wiggle free from the strap. Crouching in the seat with one arm braced on the roof, she was able to flick on the overhead light and snatch up her gun from where it had slid in between the seat and the console. Shakily, she reached over to grab Rachel’s shoulder and shake. There was no response from the other woman except the flop of a head on the airbag.

The Yorkshire yipped, shrill and loud – it hurt her ears more than it should – but she knew why when the thrum, drum of metal warping got louder and she could actually see the dim outline of someone on the hood of the car trying to burrow around the dead thing in the windshield face first. She flicked the overhead back off, staring hard through the car windows and there was another one loping up to the passenger side, its full body connecting with the side of the car with a dull ‘thud.’

“We’ve got to move.” Abby repeated, shaking Rachel again without response and instead lurching into the back seat with the two kids and grabbing the dog up by the scruff of the neck.

“What are you doing?” Ryan’s voice broke, high and panicked but she ignored him as she stared at the squirming, fluffy animal and decided how best to go about what she needed to do. It was small and warm and the part of her that didn’t write off small, toy dogs as glorified rats couldn’t help but thinking it was cute. But they were trapped and she was woozy and in that moment she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

She might have been a bit mean sometimes, but she had never purposefully hurt an animal. It took more steel than she ever thought she’d have to brace the dog against her thigh and snap both its back legs, one after the other and the high-pitched squealing yelp that came from the little creature was deafening in the small space. It had been easy, like breaking apart chicken bones but she still had to clench her teeth over the unsettling, acidic clench that took hold somewhere between her stomach and her throat. The driver’s side was still clear, so she pushed open the back door and threw the still screaming dog as far as she could into the woods, closing the door back behind her and waiting.

“Why would you do that?” Ryan was yelling, but Abby loomed over him and pressed a hand over his mouth.

“Shut up.” Her voice was low and she could feel him trembling, could feel him crying underneath her but she gritted her teeth and watched what was happening outside. She watched the feral outside move towards the noise of the dog, heard the hood dent as another one moved down and they both lumbered off in the same direction. She could hear the dog’s squeals get louder and louder, more frantic until it stopped very suddenly.

Shaking, Abby reached out to the front seat to feel for Rachel’s pulse. It was there, but she hadn’t so much as twitched.

“Fuck.” It was a hiss, a barely there breath of word but she was already moving, shoving her pistol back into the holster and she was pushing the two kids towards the door. “Let’s go.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.” It was simpler to lie.  Maybe someday she would look back and wonder why it had been so much harder to hurt the damn dog than it was to leave behind another person but in that moment she had one goal in the world and it seemed less and less likely that she was actually going to make it back home to her family.

The kids crawled out of the door after her and she winced at the loud noise it made when it slammed back shut, but they were already moving back up to the road. It was dark and she was going to have a hell of a time guiding them as she belatedly realized she hadn’t checked to see if the flashlight was on her before they’d left the car and it was too late to turn back when she realized that her bag was also still somewhere in the car.


	5. In the Doghouse

Diane didn’t know how long she sat there crying, but it had been a long time – hours probably. Her throat burned and her eyes felt raw. Her whole face ached. She couldn’t really breathe. Her nose was clogged up and she was sobbing so hard her breath was coming in short, rapid-fire bursts that left her limbs heavy and limp and made her vision blur over with dark spots. Mae had been pacing around her, whining and keening and trying to bury her head in Diane’s lap. It wasn’t any comfort, but she didn’t have the voice left to tell her poor dog to back off.

There was still a candle burning in the room, a faint flickering glow that cast long wavering silhouettes. It was enough to make it look like her dad was just sleeping, the dancing shadows tricking her blurry eyes with their illusions. The flame made it look like he was still breathing, like his fingers were flexing in the way they always did when he fell asleep in his chair. But the awful truth was that it was all fake, a trick of the light. He was dead, had been for hours – he’d burned up with fever and just stopped breathing.

She cried harder at that, kneeling over so she was doubled up, her head pressed into the floor next to his creaky chair and she could hear the dog getting anxious and pacing again, her paws clacking against the hard-wood floor. The single, loud bark was enough to make Diane jump, but she didn’t try to get up. She couldn’t, not just yet. She was still getting her breathing under control.

A pack of vegetables slid off her dad, landing on the floor with a wet, mushy splat and she could do little more that tilt her head to the side to stare at it. Another one tumbled after it.

Mae was growling then, the low deep growl that only ever came out for strangers. It kept on for long, drawn out seconds and erupted into thunderous, agitated barking that made her ears throb and the floor shake.

“Enough!” Diane croaked out, pushing herself up off the floor and trying again in a more stern voice. “Enough!”

The Rottweiler was frantic, hackles raised, half-crouched and vicious. She was barking madly at the recliner where her dad was still splayed out just outside of Diane’s view because she couldn’t bear to turn her head back to look at him.

“Will you fucking stop it!” She stumbled to her feet, intent on snatching her unruly mutt up by the scruff of the neck and dragging her outside. She had to brace herself on the arm of the recliner, still purposefully not looking down at him when something clamped around her wrist.

She shrieked, loud and sudden and was forced to look down at the prone man she’d been trying not to look at. The chorus of barking reached its crescendo and in the flickering candle-light she could clearly make out her dad leaning forward, mouth open wide enough that she could see every toothless millimeter of his gums. He wrenched her clasped arm forward, his mouth closing around the outside of her hand with so much force it was like that time her sister had accidently slammed the car door on it. She felt something crack in her hand and the pain was like a snapped rubber-band, loose and bitter and radiating up her arm and she could only scream and finally try to wrench away.

Mae charged then, launching herself forward in a flurry of snapping jaws and Diane was able to back up, cradling her hand to her chest and mouth still open around a dying scream as she watched her father get mauled by her dog.

Her father that was jerking and moving and thrashing and grabbing, getting handfuls of whatever part of the dog he could get, iron grip latching on to folds of skin and suddenly he was lurching forward out of the chair, falling over on top of Mae and her snarling was mixing with that high-pitched, squealing yelp, just like the time she’d gotten into a vicious, snarling fight with some stray mutt that had come wondering in.

Her dad was leaning over the writhing dog, didn’t notice that he was getting ripped up by the Rottweiler and suddenly there was no more barking or growling, it was just endless shrill yelping, that hiccupping, pained dog cry and he was using his hands to dig deep into her flesh, the skin tearing with a disgusting, wet smack and Diane was screaming again, louder than the dog was because her dad was shoveling whatever flesh he could tear loose up to his face and into his mouth.

Diane stumbled backwards, gasping and pressing herself up against the table as he kneeled over, forgoing hands altogether and burying his face into the dogs torso, coming back up with a trailing, stringing heaps of flesh dangling over his chin. He was groaning, chewing with a wet, smacking slurp that sucked some of the dog bits up like spaghetti and she couldn’t hold it in anymore. She heaved, gagging and retching. Burning acid squeezed up her throat, up her nose and spewed out of her mouth, splattering on the floor.

Her dad was staring at her, still smacking and chewing but staggering upwards, arms reaching for her and she ran. She bolted through the kitchen, slamming so hard through the laundry-room door that some of the glass panes shattered. Out the back door, she tripped over the lip of the porch and scraped across rough wood, scrambling to her feet just as fast as she went down. She was halfway across their long stretch of yard, the tree line looming ahead of her nothing more than a darker smear and she stopped, bracing her hands on her knees and gasping, mouth stretched so wide it hurt as she tried to breathe.

She had to go back.

Turning around, she went as fast as adrenaline let her go as she tore back into the house, slamming into the dryer and skidding across the broken glass in the laundry room, stumbling into the kitchen and blinking in the barely there glow from a single candle that only just lit up the doorway back to the living room. She couldn’t hear anything over her own heartbeat, couldn’t see anything but shapes and silhouettes that were darker than the general darkness of the room. Blindly, she felt along the refrigerator to the counter, pawing open drawers until she found the knife drawer. Her injured hand was throbbing, but she took out the biggest knife she could get her hands on in the dark and crept forwards, crept back towards the living room and towards the groaning and shuffling she could hear, back towards the wet, slurping, smacking that threatened to have her vomiting again.

He was back eating the dog and Diane kept half her attention on him as she squinted through the dark to try and figure out where her mom was. She wasn’t in the hallway anymore and Diane for the life of her couldn’t remember her leaving.

“Mom?” She called quietly, not really expecting an answer because if her mom hadn’t come out at all the noise from before, there was no reason to think Diane’s subdued voice was going to drag her out then.

It got her dad’s attention – if he could really still be considered her dad after all this – the father she knew would never try to hurt her, would never be sitting there like some sort of starving animal eating their family pet. He was looking at her, or at least that’s what it seemed because he’d stopped feasting and was sitting up straight, turned towards her.

“It’s not him.” She tried to tell herself. “It’s not. H-h-he’s not there. It’s not him.”

Her grip on the knife was tight, too tight because it was getting harder and harder to keep a hold of it and she had to switch it out of her injured hand, into her less strong left hand. She couldn’t help but shrink back when he got up, staggering towards her like a drunk and snarling like an animal and she let him come, backing up surely and steadily and backtracking through the kitchen, crunching over the glass on the floor in the laundry room and he kept following, intent and his limbs were awkward and jerking.

She almost didn’t notice the second set of shuffling feet at the back door, whipping around as identical, jittering limbs brought a much smaller person in through the door she’d left open. Tiny, petite – it was much too small to be her mom and it was reaching for her just the same as her dad was as he lumbered through the kitchen door. She was trapped, backing away from them both and there was only one place left to go.

She scuttled backward into the bathroom at the far end of the laundry room, slamming the door closed and clicking the lock. A few seconds later the door thudded loudly, like something heavy had knocked into it and then there was nothing but growling and thuds on the other side, scratches against the wood like something was clawing at it.

Diane covered her mouth harshly, pressing her hand as tight as she could to try and stifle the sobs that were threatening to overwhelm her again. She couldn’t. She didn’t have time to break down and she forced herself to stay standing, gasping and she was still crying, her chest still heaving but she was still up, was still thinking because she was trapped and her mom was still out there somewhere, sick and defenseless and Diane was going to be damned if she lost another parent that night.

It wasn’t going to end like that.

There was a window, a big gaping thing and she was already pushing it open, peeking through the screen even as she tried to hoist herself up on the wide, tiled window sill that set as high as her chest.

The screen twanged loudly, a hand batting against it and suddenly there was a face pressing against the mesh, gnawing teeth and snapping jaw trying to chew through the fine metal weave. It was someone tall, tall and lanky and also not her mom, which was both a relief and terrifying because where were these things coming from? She slid the window closed, trying to think of something else she could do – some other way out as she backed into the corner between the shower stall and the wall. There was banging on the window now and it was only a matter of time before they were tearing their way in. One way or another, she had to get out.

“Think. Think, think, think.” Diane stared around at what little she could make out in the bathroom from the very slim light coming in through the frosted window. One door, one window. One closet that housed the water heater and electric panel and maybe just maybe she could try climbing up through there, but she knew she’d only get stuck because there was less than a foot of space left between the ceiling and the floor above.

“Fuck.” Just the idea of getting stuck in that cramped space was enough to make her panic, breathing coming short. Her sister had tried to talk her into working through her claustrophobia before, had offered to sit under the house with her for small amounts of time, had offered to help her work up to not being as bothered and traumatized as she got. They’d never gotten anywhere with it, really. A couple ventures under the house when a pipe was broke, when the air-conditioner needed maintenance and the three-foot space down there had almost gotten the best of her then.

“That’s it.” Diane forced a deep breath. She didn’t need to go up, she needed to go down. The shower was leaky, the floor mushy and soft in places. If she could make a hole big enough to get her stocky frame through she could get out under there.

There was something satisfying about using nothing but force to pry the walls of the shower down, aluminum framing bending easily and the glass panels coming free without much fuss. It took longer to pry up the fiberglass that made up the shower floor, but it was dark and the only tool she had was a kitchen knife. All the while, the pawing at the door kept up and the banging on the window led to that ominous ‘clink, clink’ that meant the glass was starting to crack.

Eventually, she was able to work the fiberglass loose enough to lever the whole thing up like a trap-door, the subfloor underneath soggy and limp and it was far too easy to scrape it away. It crumpled and the floor had been much worse off than anyone had suspected so she didn’t even need the knife to cut through most of it. She had no light to guide her, the only way she knew she was making a hole all the way through was because she could feel the damp, cool air rising up, could smell the earthy, moldy, wetness and then she was lowering herself, one hand holding up the fiberglass shell as she squeezed past a floor joist that was just solid enough to explain why the whole shower hadn’t gone crashing through the subfloor on anyone. Her feet landed in packed dirt and it took some squirming but she was able to crouch down underneath the level of the floor, letting the shower bottom down over the top of her head and closing herself in complete utter blackness and still, closed air that smelled of dirt and moss and the faintest hint of toilet.

Diane didn’t know which direction she needed to go to find the access door because she couldn’t remember what direction she’d been facing when she’d lowered herself down. Her knees were already aching from the crouch, one hand bracing against one of the joists above her head while the other was loosely clutching the knife.

There was going to be a retaining wall in every direction, three of them were going to be outside walls, with no gaps that led deeper into the crawlspace. Her breath was coming too fast, her chest was too tight and the sweat was trickling down like a waterfall, but she forced herself to start crawling, clenching the knife in her teeth so she could use both hands and she didn’t feel the pain anymore as she scuttled forward as fast as she could, until she scraped face-first into rough concrete. She kept it too her right, keeping her injured hand stretched out to feel for the door as she kept crawling along the edge. Her knees were aching, and her back was pinching uncontrollably from compensating for trying to crawl with one arm outstretched to the side.

She reached a corner, following the edge to the left as she continued trailing along the retaining wall and she just kept moving, refusing to let herself stop because if she stopped she was going to panic at the pitch black space that was trapping her. Her lungs were burning, her palm was raw and her knees felt like they were being stabbed with every movement but she kept going, sucking in air through her nose, her jaw aching because she was clenching her teeth so tightly around the plastic handle of the knife.

Another turn, and then she was scrambling as fast as she could on her knees as she felt along with both hands and finally found the wooden door that was inset in the concrete. The access door that was latched from the outside and for a long moment she just had to lean against it, breathing in as deep as she could with her face pressed up against the vent set in the door. She was suffocating and needed fresh air from outside so she could actually breathe.

For ages she sat there doing nothing gasping, trying to get her breathing under control. Diane had no idea how much time had passed and that spurred her, made her back off the door so she had room to work. She needed to get out, needed to find her mom.

Without any better ideas to move with, she took the kitchen knife to the vent, sticking it through the metal slats so she could pry them apart. With no light, it was slow going, she got first one finger through and then kept wrenching and prying. The floor creaked above her and she paused, listening. It might have been her mom or it might have been something else.

Through the grate she could just make out the silhouette of the giant wood stove and the fence that marked the pasture that ran down the hill. The gap was wider, big enough to stick her hand through but she couldn’t get her arm out enough to reach the hook-latch on the door. Everything was turning grey instead of black and Diane didn’t know whether to be relieved that it might be getting close to dawn or dreading the fact that so much time had passed and she still didn’t know where her mom was.

It was probably both. The light outside was subtle, not enough to give her any more visibility under the house but she could see the axe leaning up against the wood box.

Bracing herself, she threw all her weight into wrenching against the metal of the vent. The whole door groaned and cracked, a sudden looseness in the wood let her stick her arm all the way through the hole. It was a stretch, but her fingers found the latch and she managed to unhook it and swing the door inward.

A gunshot cracked out, loud and clear. Diane smacked the top of her head against the concrete frame as she scrambled out of the crawlspace. Another shot echoed from the other side of the house.

She dropped the bent kitchen knife, snatching up the two-sided axe from where it was leaning against the wood stove and sprinted off around the house. Her mom was leaning against the truck, a pistol clenched in shaking hands as a ragged woman limped towards her. Diane froze as she watched her mom lift the gun and fire, watched as the woman kept loping forward.

Diane roared as she charged forward, swinging the axe as hard as she could at the woman. It jarred her elbows when it made contact, the flat of the axe slamming against a skull with matted hair. The woman tumbled forward, but was still moving so she brought the axe down again and that time the blade went deep into the junction of the woman’s neck.

She was still writhing, still moving and Diane had to plant her foot on the woman’s shoulder to pry the axe free. It took another good swing to bury the blade in the woman’s head and only then did she stop moving.

She jumped when another shot fired, close and loud enough to make her ears ring. Martha was still braced against the truck, aiming towards the door of the house and Diane didn’t stop to think before she was snatching the 9mm out of her mother’s hands and whipping around to take aim at the thing that used to be her dad. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mom slump towards the ground.


	6. Good Neighbors

Abby couldn’t even guess how long she ran before she had to stop, gasping and staggering as jelly legs kept her moving down the road. Long after she’d gotten her breath back she kept moving and the only reason she knew Ryan and Chelsea were still with her was because she could hear them gasping and heaving just behind her.

Around them the trees were always rustling from the same breeze that made her sweat go cold on her skin.

They didn’t talk. They didn’t have to. All around them the little noises of the woods that never stopped kept them on edge, kept them moving as quietly as they could because who knew if any of those noises were actually one of the crazy feral people.

They heard the engine a long way off, long before they saw the headlights through the trees. Abby moved off the road, tense and waiting. It took ages. For a few long moments she was certain that it wasn’t even going to pass them by until the truck – it was too big to be anything else – was suddenly whipping around the corner from the direction they’d come.

The headlights were blinding, making Abby have to squeeze her eyes shut even as she lifted her arms over her head and waved frantically, hoping that whoever it was would stop.

The headlights passed by and Abby was left blinking in the darkness, clenching her teeth. The truck stopped further down the road, engine slowing to a rough, uneven idle and one of the brake-lights was out.

Slowly, Abby started walking towards the stopped truck, the red glow from the back-end giving more light than they’d had for what seemed like hours. Ryan and Chelsea followed her.

The passenger’s window rolled down as they walked up, smoke wafting out.

“Any of you get bit?” The voice was flat and a bit nasally, followed by a cough. Abby was mostly sure that it was a woman speaking, though she couldn’t see into the cab of the truck to make sure.

“No. None of us.” Abby answered quietly.

“Hop in the back – no room up here.” The voice croaked and the window was already rolling back up.

Abby swallowed back any nervousness she felt and stepped up on the back tire to lever herself up into the bed of the truck. It was crowded with gas-cans and big, five-gallon jugs of water. Ryan and Chelsea were slower to get in, taking the time to move around to the tail-gate before climbing up. They weren’t even seated properly before the truck was moving again.

It wasn’t very long before the truck was leaving the highway, turning down a bumpy dirt-road. Abby stared back at the highway, keeping track of the turns they made so she’d be able to find her way back out. The sun was rising, the sky turning pinkish-orange over the trees.

The ride didn’t last but a few minutes, the truck pulling to a stop just after a low-water crossing at the front of a driveway that was already crammed with three other cars. Just as soon as they pulled up the front door swung open and two kids came out. They were both brunettes and had that twin-like look, though the slight height difference made her think they were probably not twins. They were young, younger than Ryan and Chelsea and they didn’t say anything as they came up to the tailgate and started unloading supplies from the bed of the truck.

The passenger’s door swung open with a loud groan as Abby was climbing out of the bed and a tired-looking middle-aged woman slid out of the truck. She had that greyed, aged look that came from a hard-earned life. At a glance, Abby would have said she’d spent more than a few years waiting tables at a truck-stop diner. With the growing light, she could see into the cab and had a moment of confusion that there wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat before she saw the US Mail sticker in the back window.

“Don’t just stand there looking dumb. Truck’s not gonna unload itself.” The woman snapped brusquely, already heaving up one of the jugs of water over her shoulder and trekking into the house after the two kids that disappeared with their arms full.

Silently, Abby hauled up another of the five-gallon water jugs and wandered in through the front door, pressing against the wall of the narrow hallway as the two kids went rushing back out. The hallway opened up into a crowded living room where a frail old woman was sitting in a recliner and another three kids that looked like they belonged in preschool were gathered around a rickety table with coloring books and crayons. Through the window, Abby could see a couple of old men out behind the house fiddling with a roll of fencing.

“Put it just there.” The old woman said, waving at a high tower of boxes and bags that took up a corner of the living room. There was another jug of water resting at the base of it, so she plopped hers down before heading back out to the truck.

Ryan and Chelsea passed her in the hallway, arms piled high with bags.

It went on like that for several long minutes until everything from the truck had been unloaded and stashed in the house. Finally, they were inside with the door bolted tight and Abby found herself leaning against the counter in a small, dirty kitchen and staring down the gruff woman that was obviously the one in charge.

“You got a name?” Abby demanded when the stare-down didn’t seem to be drawing to a close.

“Sherry.” The woman answered shortly, pushing herself up to sit on the counter-top and flicking the ashes from her cigarette into the sink.

“Abby.” Abby fished her own smooshed pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, finding one that wasn’t bent too bad. “Got a light?”

The woman tossed a book of matches at her and for a long moment they didn’t do anything but puff on their cigarettes. Abby rolled her neck, bringing a hand up to try and knead away the tension that was starting to seed a headache. “You know any more about this clusterfuck than I do?”

Sherry snorted. “Girlie, I reckon there isn’t anything more to know about this shit-storm other than what everyone knows. There’s some bug going ‘round that’s making the dead come back with a nasty appetite. Don’t reckon I need to know more than that.”

“Not literally coming back from the dead, right?”

“Absolutely literally.” Sherry shrugged half-heartedly at Abby’s blank stare. “I won’t pretend to understand it. Just saying what I’ve seen happening. Folks get bit, get a fever and die. Then they come back.”

“They’re obviously not dead then. They can’t be.” Abby argued, though she was already thinking about the man she had shot that hadn’t gone down. “It’s not – how can they be actually dead and still get back up.”

“Beats me.” Sherry was snuffing out her cigarette. “I’m just saying what’s happening, not what’s causing it. I ain’t a scientist. All I know is you have to hit the brain if you want them to go down and stay down.”

Abby frowned, thinking back on the two she had managed to drop with head-shots and shuddering at how close she’d had to get to accomplish that. “You know how many people are affected? How many are out there?”

Sherry shrugged and answered with a short, clipped, “Beats me.”

One of the old men was hollering outside and Abby’s heartrate jumped before she could recognize the belligerent, angry rhythm of the shouts. Sherry bustled out of the kitchen with a huff and a few seconds later she could hear the low, scathing tones of the other woman giving a scolding. Abby wandered out of the kitchen into the living room where Chelsea and Ryan were huddled together on the ratty couch, exhaustion overriding everything else as Ryan was dead asleep against his sister, the girl looking only a few steps away from the same. The three young children were out of sight, though she could hear the shrill voices and giggling coming from a room deeper in the house.

“Something on your mind?” The old lady was still sitting in the recliner, squinting up at her over the top of thick, rounded glasses as she looked up from the puzzle book she’d been intent on.

“How far out is Willow Springs from here?”

The lady scrunched her face in concentration and answered slowly, “About fifteen miles or so on the highway.”

“Right.” Abby muttered under her breath. She knew she could make that in a day, had gone further than that hiking with her sister and cousin on the rare weekends they had the time and extra money for gas to get away for a while. Of course, those trips never came after a night-long survival binge with rabid cannibals at every turn.

“It might be shorter to go through the woods, but I wouldn’t know how you’d go about it that way.” The woman continued. “You’d be doing some trespassing, though.”

Abby didn’t give a single damn about trespassing at this point, didn’t give a damn about a lot of things that she was probably going to have to do in the future. She pulled the revolver out of the holster, releasing the cylinder to pull out the spent rounds. Three empty cases came out and she left the last two shots in place as she snapped the cylinder back into place. The old woman was watching her, frowning.

“You aren’t going out there again, are you?”

“Have to.” Abby said shortly, letting herself out the back door where the two men were still struggling with the roll of fencing. When she was outside, she could hear their bickering.

“You’re holding it wrong, I’m telling you.”

“You’re unrolling it wrong, making it a whole lot harder than this has any business being.”

“You ain’t never built a proper fence before, ain’t never kept anything but rabbits.”

Abby snorted at the banter, catching the two men’s attention. “The lady in there said there might be a shorter way to Willow than taking the highway. Could either of you tell me the best way to cut through the woods?”

They stared at her for a long second before they were both talking at once.

“You don’t want to go out there –”

“It’s not safe for a woman to go off by herself –”

Sherry’s voice cut through suddenly, “You two leave her alone. It’s obvious she has somewhere she has to be and if you think you’re gonna talk a woman out of protecting her family, then the both you got no sense.”

Sherry had just come from around the side of the house with a t-post driver, dropping it down in the dirt and yanking leather gloves off her hands as she turned her attention to Abby. “And if you’re gonna just go charging off with nothing but that pea-shooter and whatever ammo you got left, then you’ve got no more sense than they do.”

“Not like I have many options here.” Abby snapped.

“True.” Sherry patted her on the shoulder as she moved past to go back into the house. “But hang on a few minutes and I’ll get you set for the road. Water, food – Ol’ John here knows what way to send you off and I figure I can spare a pistol so you ain’t going out there with nothing to defend yourself with. Ain’t just getting eaten you have to worry about, hun. I reckon there’s a lot of scared, desperate people out there.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Abby said, tightness clenching her gut suddenly as she followed the woman back through the living room and to a cluttered, dark bedroom that was packed high with boxes. “You got enough to worry about here.”

“I don’t have to do nothing. Didn’t have to go through my mail route and find people that needed safe-keeping, but here they are. The only way we’re gonna get through this is by looking out for each other. Way I see it, this isn’t just gonna go away overnight. It’s gonna take some fixing. So we’re gonna stick it out, stick together and wait for this mess to clear up.”

Abby nodded. That was her plan exactly, to get home and figure out a way to get through whatever was happening. Sherry was moving boxes around, finally found what she was looking for because she was lifting up the cardboard flaps and dragging out a dusty backpack. “People always gave me shit about being a ‘hoarder.’ It’s too bad they ain’t around now for me to rub it in their face that it’s been a blessing and not a curse like they seemed to think.”

The bag was shoved at Abby and she watched as the woman burrowed further into the room into the crammed corner where the bed was. A shotgun was lying haphazardly across the top of another stack of boxes and Sherry tossed it onto the bed and started shuffling more boxes out of the way until she reached the bottom one.

“Here we go. Got a .45 here with a couple magazines and a full box of ammo.” Sherry declared, pulling out a pistol stashed in a nylon holster and tossing it on the bed, following with the magazines and the box of rounds. “Should get you through okay.”

“You don’t need it?” Abby asked, already reaching for the gun and flipping up the snaps that kept it firmly in place in the holster, pulling out the gun to examine it and recoiling just as soon as she saw the logo. “This is a Kimber.”

“You gonna turn your nose up at it?” Sherry laughed.

“No. It’s – this is a really nice gun. It costs more than my car.” Abby answered, reverently running her finger over the textured grip. “When you said you could throw me a spare, I was expecting a junker.”

Sherry shrugged, smiling tightly. “Not gonna do much good sitting in a box. I’ve got my shotgun, John and Robert are rifle types. Cynthia don’t have the hand strength to pull back a slide. Might as well go to someone that can use it. The price-tag don’t really matter anymore, not when it’s someone’s life on the line.”

Abby stared hard at the gun, swallowing hard over the lump forming in her throat. “I don’t – I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

“That’s all you need to say.” Sherry nodded towards the door. “You know where the water is, take a couple bottles. There’s boxes of food – make sure you got enough to get you through. Make sure to see John before you go – he’s lived here all his life, spent more time out in the woods than at home. He’ll be able to set you in the right direction. You get to your family, make sure they’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

Abby nodded, forcing a deep breath over the acid in her throat as she floundered to load ammo into the empty magazines, stashing the rest of the box in the gifted backpack. She slid one of the mags into place in the pistol, pulling back the slide to make sure there was a round in the chamber. She stashed the gun back in the holster, hesitating before looking back up at Sherry.

“You got a belt I can wear so I can carry this?”

The older woman nodded, going back to ruffling through boxes.

Within short order, Abby was packed up with three bottles of water, two bananas and a box of cereal bars. At Sherry’s insistence, she’d eaten some eggs and toast and had downed a cup of ground-filled coffee that had to be made on the stove. She hadn’t realized how much of her growing headache had been caused by hunger and dehydration until she’d downed the food and started chugging some water. After that, it only took a few minutes for the throbbing to recede into something low-key and manageable.

“…don’t follow the first creek – that’ll put you out back on the highway only a little ways down the road.” John was explaining for the fourth time. Abby was patiently listening to the old man, more for the sake that he seemed to like the audience than because she needed the directions rehashed. She’d already written down the dirt roads she needed to follow to get out into the woods, knew the general lay of the land and the landmarks she needed to watch out for so she could cut through the national forest and save herself about six miles of walking.

From the sounds of it, it was going to be rough in the woods. Still, she didn’t really have another option. The three cars in the driveway were busted, had been for a long time and as much as it might have tempted her before, Abby wasn’t going to jack the only working vehicle Sherry had after the woman had been so helpful and hadn’t even had to ask whether Abby planned on dumping Ryan and Chelsea on her. She was also purposefully ignoring any warring thoughts she was having about the kindness of these people to her when she had knowingly left a woman to be eaten alive only a few hours earlier.

It was still early when she slipped out of the house for the last time, Sherry seeing her out the door and handing her a slip of paper with directions scrawled out on it. “In case things out there are worse than you can handle. You and your family are welcome back here if you need.”

Abby nodded, slipping the scrap of paper into her pocket and taking off down the road with a backwards wave and a slow, steady stride that would save her energy for when she really needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading


	7. Friends in Low Places

Diane moved her mom into the garage, had trekked back into the house to drag out bedding and couch-cushions and set Martha up comfortably on the concrete floor so she could sleep. She kept the door closed tight, kept as quiet as she could when she had to go back into the house to move water and food out with them.

The whole time she ignored the bodies on the porch, stepped over the corpse in the doorway, skirted around what was left of the dog – she didn’t look at them. She couldn’t.

Her mom didn’t ask questions when she was awake – Diane didn’t try and explain anything because she didn’t know how to explain it. She didn’t know what was going on, what was happening: she didn’t know jack shit. So she focused on doing – on turning the garage into a little den for them to huddle in, a nest for them to sleep in, a burrow to hide in.

She got as much out of the house as she could: meds, food, water, bandages; the guns that weren’t locked in the safe, the boxes of ammo, the machete her sister used to clear brush; candles, flashlights, lighter-fluid: it all came out, stacked around them in their hidey-hole until they had enough for a couple months, if it was just the two of them.

Which it probably was, because Dave was dead and Abby hadn’t made it home. Whatever was going on out there, it was bad. Bad enough that there were no emergency services, bad enough that there was no cell service, bad enough that her sister hadn’t made it home – bad enough that they weren’t trying to fix it, just evacuating everyone and if no one was coming to fix it they were stuck exactly where they were.

Diane couldn’t let herself think about that though because she would break if she did. She couldn’t afford to break, Martha needed her still functioning. If Diane couldn’t keep moving, couldn’t keep pushing then her mom would weaken even more than she already had since she had first gotten sick.

 “I heard you screaming.” Martha said suddenly and Diane jumped. She hadn’t even known her mother was awake.

“What?”

“In the house. I heard you screaming and I heard the dog barking. I was outside. I was sitting in the truck because I couldn’t be in there anymore.”

Diane listened quietly.

“I saw you run out and then go straight back in. And then they were there, going in after you. I couldn’t find the gun. It was under the seat.” She choked. “I thought – I thought I was gonna lose my baby after losing my husband.”

“I’m right here, mom.” Diane said calmly, sliding across the floor to squeeze her mother’s hand.

“It took so long to find it, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to help you if I didn’t. I’m not strong enough to fight anyone. When I did find it, I couldn’t remember how to work it. It’s been so long since I’ve shot and I couldn’t – I couldn’t remember what to do to get it to fire.”

“Because of the stroke?” Diane wondered aloud. There had been a lot of things her mother had lost when she’d had the stroke. Numbers were hard for her, certain memories were just gone. She’d forgotten certain words and forgot how to do things. It had been a mild one and they’d caught it quickly, but there were still lasting effects.

“I don’t know.” Martha sighed, deep and heavy and closed her eyes. “I had to try so hard to get it to work. It took me so long.”

“It’s okay, mom. It worked out.”

“It’s not okay. I couldn’t protect you. You needed me and I couldn’t do anything!” She was shouting and Diane shushed her quickly.

“You did protect me, mom. You did. You fought and you’re the reason I fought. You’re okay, I’m okay. We’re going to get through this.” Diane murmured, squeezing her mother’s hand as hard as she dared. “We’re okay.”

Martha was silent after that, clutching back at Diane until she fell back asleep.

Diane knew she ought to get some sleep as well. She’d been up all night, she was exhausted and moving slow. It was hard to think and she hurt. The hand that her dad had tried to bite was swollen and bruised, she could feel where the bone was snapped and shifting around where it shouldn’t be. She’d been using it too much and too hard when she really ought to have been taking it easy and resting it. She might not have cared about the lasting damage if there hadn’t been someone depending on her being well.

It was easy to find the ace-wrap, less easy to find something to splint it with. Ironically, the garage itself proved more helpful than their medical supplies – a couple of drill bits would be good enough to brace the bone.

The splint was easy enough in theory, but it was a bitch-and-a-half to try and do it one handed. Her left hand felt clumsy as she laid out the ace wrap across her thigh and tried to get the drill bits pinched into their proper places and still have enough room to wrap the hand up. It didn’t help that putting the strain on her injured hand made a wave of pain shoot up her arm that was sour and punishing, quick like lightning and ever so slow to fade when she did let up on the pressure. The third time she lost hold of the end of the elastic wrap and the bits went skittering across the floor, when she had to cradle her hand to her chest and wait for the pain to ebb away so she could try again, she changed tactics. It was much easier to wrap up her hand without trying to keep the metal in place.

It hurt. It hurt so fucking bad. Diane screwed her face up, gritting her teeth as she pried up the ace wrap and worked the first drill bit into place alongside the broken bone. It pressed hard, the wrap snug and secure and whatever relief she had first had from the constant, steady pressure of the compression was lost to the wretched ache under her skin. She had to break for a while after that, rocking back and forth and trying so very hard not to cry.

At long last, it faded to something less overwhelming, something manageable and she took several large, shaking breathes before snatching up the second bit to make sure the bone was braced from the other side.

It wasn’t as bad the second time, maybe because there was less wrenching to get the bit in from that angle or maybe because the sweat on her palms made for an easier slide than the dry skin on the top of her hand. It was over quick and she’d done what she needed to do.

Once again, Diane didn’t know what to do next. Her mom was still sleeping soundly, and there wasn’t really much left to drag out of the house. Still, she slowly got to her feet and grabbed up the pistol that had been resting in easy reach next to her hip. Without anything specific in mind, she eased out of the garage, silently making sure the latch caught completely as she closed the door behind her. A brief scan of the area showed nothing, no movement. The coast was clear from what she could see and she couldn’t hear anything but the rustling of the wind and a few birds chittering as they fluttered around the lowest branches of the big oak tree in front of the house.

Gravel crunched under her feet as she crossed the driveway, not letting herself stop or look down as she neared the bodies that were still splayed over the porch. It occurred to her that it might be wise to move them, might be better to clear the doorway so she could close it properly, but she couldn’t even bring herself to look, let alone touch.

That was her daddy laying there. Face down on the rough wooden slats, skin ripped and mangled – half a dozen bullets in him before he finally went down, before she got him in the head.

She’d had to get them all in the head, some way or another. Nothing else worked. Maybe because they were already dead, but she couldn’t even begin to comprehend how that was even possible.

All she knew was that her dad had died. He’d died. Then he’d gotten back up and tried to take a bite out of her.

Diane moved through the house again, rummaging through drawers and stepping on broken glass. She found a couple more flashlights, some batteries, a pint of bourbon that her dad had stashed away. The radio was still sitting on the table next to her dad’s chair, silent and she grabbed it up and went to sit in Dave’s small workroom. Breathing heavily, she took as big a gulp of the bourbon as she could stomach as she sat at his workbench and flicked the radio on.

Static.

Cursing, Diane tweaked the antenna and slowly turned the dial through the stations, trying to find one that was still broadcasting. There was one, but it was crackly and distant and she couldn’t make out the words. The only reason she knew it was still the emergency alert message was because she could hear the intermittent buzz-honk in between the garbled voice.

She kept trying, taking another swig of the liquor as she cranked the tuning dial as low as it would go and started tuning up. Slowly, steadily, intently.

Static. Static. More static.

She passed by the wisp of a station that was still blaring the message and kept going.

More static.

She was almost to the top, around the 105s and it was just endless static. Then “ _…in low places where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away and I’ll be okay. Hey, I’m not big on social graces. Think I’ll slip on down to the oasis. Oh, I’ve got friends in low places._ ”

Diane stared at the radio, at the country song blaring through the speakers. “What the fuck?”

It was Garth Brooks. She wasn’t that big into country music, but knew enough people who were and there was no way she didn’t recognize that song. She listened to it blankly as the song kept on, listened but didn’t comprehend. It ended pretty quickly. She’d tuned into the last of it, apparently.

As the song faded, a voice came on.

“ _Well folks, that was Garth Brooks with ‘Friends in Low Places.’ One of my favorites. Hope you liked it. If you didn’t, I don’t care because it’s the end of the world and it’s my radio station now and I’m going out playing whatever the fuck I wanna play. Course, I’m open to requests if anyone’s willing to pick up their goddamn phones and give me a call. I can’t reach anybody, ain’t no one listening in obviously. Or they just don’t care. But I’ll give the number off anyways. Just in case. And if you don’t call, you can’t complain now can you?_ ”

Diane scrambled for the phone, never happier that her mom had insisted on keeping the landline for ‘just in case’ as she punched out the number that the man on the radio listed off and put the receiver to her ear.

The phone rang.

On the radio, the man stopped what he was saying mid-sentence and there was a long moment where there was nothing.

“ _Well I’ll be damned._ ”

The phone in her ear clicked and for a long moment Diane couldn’t hear anything, either on the receiver or the radio.

“Hello?” The man asked hesitantly and there was a delay before she heard the echo through the radio speakers.

“Hi.” Diane said, swallowing thickly. “I got a request.”

Silence was her answer.

“Please, please, please tell me what’s going on. Please. Because I woke up yesterday morning and the power was out and then there was nothing but the emergency broadcast and then my dad died and came back and I don’t know what to do.” Diane choked. “I don’t – I don’t know what’s happening.”

There was another long moment of silence and for a minute Diane thought maybe she was going crazy and that there wasn’t actually anyone there. Her voice broke when she asked, “Are you there?”

“Yeah, Sweetheart. I’m here.”

“I don’t – I don’t know what’s happening.” Diane repeated helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t – I’m not prepared to handle this.”

“Ain’t nobody I ever known prepared to handle this.” The voice on the line said quietly. “You said your daddy died and came back. He was bitten by one of them, right?”

Diane choked. “Yes. How did – how did you…”

“Bite’s how it spreads. Get bit and you start running a fever. Then after it kills you, you come back as one of them.”

She sobbed at that. “Isn’t there – isn’t there some way to stop it?”

A harsh laugh from the man on the line, “Not that anyone’s found yet. You get bit, you’re done for. Were you bit, honey?”

“No.” Diane whispered. “Yes – but he didn’t have teeth. Didn’t break the skin.”

“Well I’ll be damned. You’re a lucky one. You got a name, Sweetheart?”

“Diane.” She said slowly. “You?”

“Scott. There’s something else you have to know here. They’re dead. They’re already dead,” he explained. “And they don’t die a second time. Won’t go down, not unless you – ”

“Get them in the head?” She interrupted bluntly.

It took a few seconds for him to reply. “You figure that out on your own?”

“Yes. He didn’t go down at first. Not after the first shot, or the second, or the third. He just kept coming. Then I got him in the head and he was down. And the second one – I had to keep shooting him and it was the same. And there was the one with the axe – I put it through her head.”

“You sound like you know how to handle yourself.”

“Nope. Just desperate.” Diane drawled back, slumping forward over the workbench and fiddling with the still mostly full bottle of bourbon. “They were after my mom.”

“You safe now?”

She stared around at the cluttered workroom for a minute, turning her gaze out of the window. “Doubt it. How many of them are there? How – how far does this go?”

“I don’t know how far this goes. It’s been happening everywhere, I think. As far as how many – I think there’s at least two-dozen of them outside the station. That’s just here, just right here. They’ve got the place surrounded. Can’t get in – but there ain’t no way out, neither.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too, lady. Me too.” Scott sighed heavily. “I’m set for a little while. Got the generators, some water. Ain’t much in the way of food, but hopefully I can hold out long enough for someone to… Fuck it. I don’t even know if there’s anyone out there that can help. The National Guard was mobilized last week, but where are they now? Ain’t no one answering the phone when I call 9-1-1 and I know a little something ‘bout emergency systems. They’re set up to hold up in power outages. They’re set up to run when the grid’s down. Like this station, there’s a backup system. So why ain’t it working? It should be working.”

“Something happened at the call center probably.” Diane mused, leaning back in the chair until it was tilted on the back two legs. She threw back another shot of the bourbon and set it on the windowsill behind her. “Or there’s no one there anymore. Evacuation order was meant for everybody, I suppose.”

“So why didn’t you go?” Scott asked.

Diane snorted. “No one was giving any real information out. Didn’t know what I was supposed to be running from, what I was supposed to be getting away from. Not everyone was home and I wasn’t ‘bout to leave my sister behind because I knew she’d be headed back home. And even if I thought it was a good idea, how was I supposed to get there? It’s a hundred miles to the nearest one and there ain’t no gas to be had anywhere. Why didn’t you go?”

“Same reasons as you, I suppose.” He explained. “Didn’t know hardly anything. Came to the station to try and tune into some official channels and see what I could find out before dragging my family out in this mess. They’re still waiting on me at the house. I told them to wait for me to get back. I was gonna find out what was going on and then figure out what to do.”

“Learn anything from those official channels?”

“Only what I told you.” Scott grunted. “I think they fucked up. I think – I think they were holding off on letting the public know what was really going on and that was a big mistake because no one knew to stay away from someone if they got bit. And then next thing we know it’s out of control.”

“Trying to avoid a panic and instead making it uncontrollable.” Diane turned over the possibility in her head for quite a few seconds. “Funny though. I’d heard about the riots and whatnot. My sister thought it was ridiculous, half of what people were saying. Thought it was some scam to keep our attention locked up so we weren’t paying attention to what else was happening.”

Scott laughed. “Wish that were true. I’d take a whole heap of new taxes over this any day. Your sister make it back okay?”

She swallowed hard, forcing a deep breath before answering. “No. Abby’s not home yet. I don’t – I don’t know if she’s gonna get here.”

“I hope she does.” Scott said, voice low and surprisingly sincere. “I hope she does.”

“I hope you get back to your family.” Diane replied, meaning it. “I don’t know if there’s any way I could help you, but if I could…”

“Yeah. Same for you.”

They were silent for a good long while after that. Diane couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t feel fake and shallow. What was she supposed to talk about in this situation? The weather? Sports? The news?

“You still there?” It was Scott asking this time.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Any requests?”

Diane frowned in confusion and it hit quite suddenly that they were still broadcasting and there was a moment of unease that she didn’t know how many people could have been listening to their conversation. But then, she wasn’t sure it mattered any if they had.

“Not really big on country music.” Diane said slowly. “But – got any Skynyrd?”

“You bet your ass I do.” Scott said. “What song?”

“Gimme Three Steps.”

“Done.”

Through the radio, Diane heard the opening chords for the song start up. She could hear Scott humming along through the phone receiver and singing along flatly when the lyrics started up. She turned the volume down on the radio so she could still hear the song without drowning out Scott on the line. “What do you think I should do now?”

Her question didn’t come through the radio speakers and she was glad for that.

“Get safe.” Scott answered immediately. “Get your mom and make yourselves safe.”

“How? Where? She’s sick – really sick.” Diane felt like she was going to cry in that moment. “I don’t – I don’t know what I’m going to do when she runs out of medicine.”

“Hit the pharmacies.”

“They don’t stock it. It’s too – it’s a new drug. We have to get it shipped in every three months.” Diane took a shuddering breath. “I don’t remember when the last delivery was.”

Scott was silent for a good long while. “Well, Sweetheart. My best suggestion is to make your peace. Make the most of the time you got.”

It was absolutely not what Diane wanted to hear and she was a half-click away from getting angry until she heard the rumble of an engine. She automatically turned the volume on the radio all the way down, leaning closer to the window to listen to the sound of the engine drawing closer. It was a smooth rumble, heavy and loud and powerful; even and smooth and healthy. It was something that was tuned up right, not at all like her families’ pitiful, sputtering pickup.

“Someone’s driving up the road.” Diane whispered.

“Be careful, Honey.” Scott said.

She didn’t respond, listening intently as the sound of the engine got closer and she was on her feet in a flash when a cop car suddenly whipped into her driveway, skidding to a stop in the gravel and outside of the range of view she had from her window.

“It’s a cop. A fucking cop just pulled into my driveway.” Diane wasn’t sure what to do with the information. She heard the car door slam shut, the crunching of gravel under jogging footsteps and stayed frozen in place when she heard the footsteps across on the other side of the house.

“He’s in the house.” Diane whispered and she thought she shouldn’t be as terrified as she suddenly felt. A cop – they should be there to help, right?

“You got your gun on you still?” Scott asked through the receiver.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be afraid to use it if you have to.” Scott said definitively. “Put the phone down and take care of it. I saw – people are going crazy right now. Get back on when you’ve settled it.”

Diane did as he said, setting the receiver down on the table and picking up her 9mm. She could hear the footsteps more clearly, tromping quickly through the kitchen. Every muscle in her body tensed and she aimed her gun at the door, waiting. She had to force herself not to hold her breath. In the living room, the footsteps stopped. Diane thought her heart might just be trying to pull a Houdini right out of her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been my favorite chapter so far. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed.


	8. Through Thicket and Thin

Abby had to pee in the worst way, the urge incessant and she’d been putting it off so long that she actually thought she might piss herself. Nature’s call had morphed into something loud and obnoxious, like a tornado siren blaring out from her bladder. But peeing meant having to stop and find a place in the middle of the woods where she could drop her pants and make herself even more exposed and vulnerable than she already felt. She tried to ignore it.

She’d been walking for ages, second guessing herself the whole way as she tripped through the thick underbrush. The directions from John were still fresh in her mind, she’d double checked the written directions at least a dozen times and she knew logically she was still on the right track, or at least close enough that it didn’t make much of a difference. She also knew logically that if she wanted to, she could veer off to her right and keep going in a straight line and eventually find her way back to the highway she’d originally been on. None of that helped with the oppressive feeling of being hopelessly lost and hunted as she kept pushing tired muscles up the steepening slope.

She still really, really had to pee. There was nothing else for it. She’d been walking for hours and though she was probably getting close to town she simply couldn’t wait any longer. Plus, she knew it was at least slightly safer copping a squat in the woods than stumbling around trying to find a toilet in a place that had a lot more people and a lot higher chance of having crazy, not-people trying to eat her.

Abby stopped after banking the top of the hill, heaving and doubling over as she waited for noodle legs to turn into something a bit more solid. She shrugged off the back pack, and that was a relief she didn’t know she needed because as soon as the pressure from the straps let up, the raw bruising on her shoulder that stretched down across her collarbone made itself known. She groaned, trying and failing to rub the soreness out of the area as she looked all the way around for several long moments before picking a spot where she could take a leak.

Peeing outside was a skill that she had never quite mastered and it came as no surprise that she got some piss on her pant-leg. It wasn’t much, just a dribble but it added another level to the feeling of filth that seemed to coat her. She was hot, sweating and her shirt was stiff in places from where the sweat had soaked it from working all day and running for her life half the night. The fresh sweat at least didn’t have that old, cheesy smell that reminded her of high-school gym class and lockers full of sweaty clothes that never seemed to be washed often enough. Worst was the old, meaty reek of the hard, brownish-red crusted spots where spatters of blood had stained the once white tank top. And now she had piss on her pant leg.

With her pants buttoned back up, Abby made sure her guns were in order on her belt. With the .45 hooked in easy reach on her hip, her .38 was hanging over her right butt-cheek, still in easy reach if the worst happened and she ran through all the preloaded ammo for the other handgun. It was hard to imagine that she would, that she’d get in so much trouble that two mags and 16 rounds wouldn’t cut it. But with the way things had turned out for her so far, it was worth the discomfort of it digging into her lower back under the weight of the backpack.

She stretched out the bathroom break for a few more minutes, long enough to shove a banana down her throat and chug half a bottle of water. It didn’t touch on the real problem of her exhaustion but it made her feel a little more fortified. It wasn’t food or rest keeping her going anyways. At that point, the only real fuel she had in her system was resolve, and that was exactly what made her shoulder her bag back up and start moving again.

Something moved through the brush and she froze, listening as hard as she could and huffing through her nose when she saw the squirrel skittering around at the base of a tree a few yards away. It took a few minutes for her heart to stop hammering as she pushed forward, trying to tell herself to stop jumping at shadows. But she knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t. She was alone out there and that on its own was enough to make her nervous.

Abby’s car had broken down on her a few months earlier, way out in the sticks where the houses were so far apart there was no telling how long it would be before she came across another human. At the time, she’d been terrified. It had been late, close to midnight and out that far in the boonies she’d not had even a blip of cell service. She couldn’t decide if her fear then had been ridiculous or if she had not been scared enough. It hadn’t been that far back and she’d already been hearing about some of the riots that weren’t actually riots but maybe dead folks going around eating live ones. At the time she’d been jumpy, scared – looking over her shoulder constantly and using the not-very-bright LED flashlight to light up the trees on either side of the road in an attempt to catch sight of something or someone that might have been stalking her as she moved on foot down some winding back highway to try and find a phone. Her imagination had conjured up some weird shit that night. At one point she’d been certain she’d seen a dark, crouched figure wearing a kabuki mask.

Walking through the woods by herself in broad daylight when she knew there were real, flesh-eating monsters wandering around made the last trip seem like a giant joke. Granted, there had been real danger before. As a woman, the last place she wanted to find herself was alone and stranded somewhere she didn’t know, with people that may or may have not been friendly. Walking up and knocking on a stranger’s door in the back woods of Southern Missouri in the dead of night was perhaps the single most terrifying thing she’d done in her twenty-four years, until that was replaced when she drove up on a car-crash and had to shoot a man that wasn’t a man in the head.

There were real monsters out there now.

She had to be getting close to town. The going was slow, but even then Abby knew how fast humans moved on their own two feet. Three miles an hour on average – she was probably making less than that since she had to fight her way through brush and side-track to get around big patches of those damned invasive thorns that littered the area like an outbreak of plant-herpes. But even with the slow pace, she’d easily been walking for over three hours without stopping. The sun was almost straight up, beating down on her because it was still early enough in the year that the leaves were not fully grown in. That ought to put her at the tail-end of her hike through the woods.

John had said it was about eight miles in a straight shot. She had to be almost there.

Sure enough, Abby hadn’t been slogging for much longer when she found her way blocked by barbed wire. It was a relief in one way – it meant she’d come to the end of the National Forest and was that much closer to town, but it also meant she was about to cross over onto someone’s property. There was a possibility she would end up facing a pissed off homeowner with a shotgun, or the residents might be the sort to have her over for dinner. That was the country gamble, one she wasn’t willing to place bets on. She wasn’t willing to place her money on her own sense of direction by trying to find her way around, either. Hopefully, she’d get through to the highway without being caught.

She dropped her pack over the other side of the fence and wrenched on the wire to test it. It was mostly tight, not enough sag for her to dip it down to step over but just enough give that she could lever the topmost wire up so she could climb through. It took some contorting to get through it without nicking herself on the rusted barbs and she wasn’t able to avoid the spikes snagging on the thigh of her too-loose cargo pants as she crouched through the wires. Once the fabric was caught it became a weird balancing game, trying to shift enough to get free without catching her skin and she wobbled, corrected too much and the top of her shirt got hooked as well. Her patience didn’t last past that and she wrenched herself the rest of the way through the fence. Long, stinging lines stretched across her back, but her leg was fine. The pants were torn a few inches down from the crotch.

Abby picked up her bag and kept going.

On the other side of the fence, the trees thinned out into a wide pasture. There wasn’t a house in sight, but Abby was sure to give the roving herd of cattle plenty of space as she trudged across the open field. They watched her as she passed, a few of the younger calves skittering further away but not getting so antsy that she had to worry about an angry bull coming at her. On the far side of the pasture, she battled another barbed-wire fence.

The grass was grown up nearly to her hips there, riddled with weeds and sticker bushes and the brush was so overgrown that she didn’t have any warning that the dirt road was there until she was tripping into the overgrown drainage ditch. She managed to catch herself before she went down complete, only turning her ankle a bit and her work boots braced her leg enough that it only ached a little bit afterwards. Cursing to herself, she heaved up the uneven bank onto the road and spent a few minutes staring down in either direction. It was rough and bumpy, poorly maintained – it was probably a private road. After a few more minutes of looking back and forth, she started following it to the left where it seemed to curve around back towards where she was mostly certain the highway was supposed to be.

It felt like she was going much slower now that she was on the road, partly because she wasn’t surrounded by trees any longer and anything she passed that marked the distance inched by at a snail’s pace but mostly because she fucking hurt. Her progress seemed like a slow drag, like she was trudging through mud or water and her muscles seemed to think that was exactly what she was doing if the throbbing in her calves was any indication. She was reaching that point towards the end of her rope where she was just trudging through because she had to, where her muscles were pushed too far and her steps were smaller because she didn’t have the energy to keep up the pace. Heavy, clumsy – she tripped a bit on a rough patch on the road that shouldn’t have given her any trouble at all, just a slight misstep because she hadn’t stepped high enough to clear the edge of the pothole.

It took a while, but Abby caught sight of a house at the end of the long stretch road, at the edge of another stretch of pasture that was dotted with a separate herd of cattle. It was tall, set partially into the hill so the bottom story was half underground. There was a grey pickup truck parked out front, closer to new than to old judging by the design and the unblemished paint job. Abby kept her eyes on the place, picking out more details as she slowly got closer. There was a bunch of chintzy, plastic playground stuff around the side of the house and the windows were mostly covered by lacy curtains. One of the curtains shifted a bit, but she didn’t see any other movement.

It was very quiet.

The air felt heavy as she kept walking down the road. Outside of the woods it was more open and breezy, but the sun felt hotter. It was open, exposed - she felt watched, but couldn’t tell if there was a real source for it or just her own panicked imaginings. The same curtain fluttered in the same window and she was close enough to get a glimpse of an old man squinting down at her from the second story before the curtain fluttered back closed.

Nothing else happened and she just kept walking until the house was at her back. She had to slow down to pick her way over the top of a cattle-guard, through an open gate that spit her out on another dirt road that was wider, smoother and had proper drainage on either side. She followed it to the left because as best she could see it dwindled off to nearly nothing just a few hundred yards to the right.

There were other driveways along the road, some long and winding so she couldn’t see what was at the end of them, but others were short and abrupt up to houses that were all still and silent and littered with people’s stuff in a way that made it wrong that there wasn’t anyone around to make the places seem lived in. Occasionally there was movement in windows, people peeking out and keeping watch but no one came out, no one bothered her and she decided to give them the same courtesy.

The next crossroad had pavement going off to the right and was lined with smaller houses and smaller yards. Abby followed the asphalt, knowing it was the surefire way to get closer to the highway. She kept to the middle of the road and gave in to her paranoia every so often, turning back to make sure the street was still clear and empty, kept glancing at the houses on either side of the road and the spaces in between to make sure nothing was going to take her by surprise. At one point, she saw something shifting around in one of the houses. She could see clearly through the big, bay window and all her focus went to the bumbling, jerky movements of a young man aimlessly shuffling around. She froze long enough to double check, to make certain her initial suspicion was right and it was one of those things.

There was blood smeared across his face and when he caught sight of her he was immediately pressed against the window and mindlessly trying to reach through it to get her, jaw snapping and face pressed to the glass. Abby didn’t stay around to watch, instead forcing her aching thighs to work harder, driving calves that were starting to feel like mincemeat. The street dead-ended into a much larger, two-lane road with a center turning lane. The sign on the crossroad confirmed that she’d found highway 76.

Abby stopped at the highway, straining to look as far down the road as she could. She couldn’t tell how far out she was, couldn’t see anything recognizable that would give her a hint on how much longer she had to walk to make it to town. With a deep, heaving breath she shifted the straps on her shoulders so the bag wasn’t cutting in quite as bad as before and started down the center lane. She didn’t realize it for quite some time, but it was very strange that the highway was deserted so close to town. A good twenty minutes of walking later, she hadn’t heard the sound of a single car and she’d reached the junction where the interstate crossed under the bridge on the outskirts of Willow Springs.

It was an eerie contrast that the same highway she’d abandoned the day before was empty when fifty miles east it had been so clogged and packed with cars and people that she’d not been able to access it.

A truck stop on the other side of the overpass loomed ahead, still and quiet and seemingly empty. There were a few cars in the parking lot and the doors were wide open. From what Abby could see, the place was abandoned, though. There was no human movement, just the random fluttering of a few birds that were scavenging around the fuel pumps. She kept her distance for a while before she started working her way towards the station. Through the open doors, she could see the shelves were mostly bare and the whole place looked kind of trashed, like everyone had been in too much of a rush to care when they were knocking stuff onto the floor and nobody had bothered to go through and clean up afterwards. A sign had been put up that they were sold out of gas and water, followed by a list that extended straight to the edge of the paper about everything else that was gone. All the liquor was gone apparently, and there was no more soda either. There was no movement inside from what she could see, but Abby was still cautious as she moved forward to the open door. She didn’t hear anything as she stepped into the semi-dark building and looked around.

There was still some crap on the shelves, mostly the odd package of chips or candy and the weird odds and ends that were always sold at gas stations. There was broken packages scattered on the floor and the cigarette shelf behind the counter was bare.

She did manage to find a book of matches half-shoved under the cash register and she wasted no time lighting up a bent cigarette as she browsed what little was left for anything useful. It occurred to her in that moment just how fucking ridiculous it was that it had only been two days and here she was looting some trashed business for scraps of anything that she might need in the next few days or weeks or however long this nonsense was going to last.

It was weirdly satisfying when she uncovered a bottle of aspirin that had been kicked under one of the shelves, when she found the three-pack of lighters that had been sitting in with the discount dvds and the jackpot from her rummaging was the nearly full pack of cigarettes she found in the pocket of a jacket that was tucked behind the counter.

Then, just because there was no reason not to, she started shoving cd’s into her bag. An unexpected wave of giddiness had her giggling. It wasn’t actually funny, but in a stupid way it was hilarious, just like when she’d been helping out her cousin clean out her parent’s stuff after the funeral and found the drawer full of sex toys. The situation was awful and terrifying and so overwhelming and so outrageous she didn’t know what else to do. So she laughed.

At some point she couldn’t stay standing any longer and ended up on the floor. She wasn’t sure how long she spent sprawled across the linoleum, laughing so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. Great, heaving laughter that made her stomach ache and then she was crying – loud, uncontrollable tears that wouldn’t stop and made her lungs feel tight and constricted. She couldn’t even see past her own, dribbling nose because the tears were hot and burning.

It took a long time to stop and even longer to get her breathing back under control. For a good long while, she didn’t do anything but lean against the shelf and stare at the bit of window she could see over the top of the display in front of her, using the collar of her shirt to wipe away the tears and snot that were smeared over her face.

Footsteps made Abby snap out of her daze in the worst way. The pace was quick and sure, the thud-crunch of boots on asphalt getting closer. She heard the skid-clang of a shoe scraping over the metal threshold and the noise stopped abruptly after the first smack-thunk against linoleum. She tried to keep her breathing even as she shifted to try and get herself into a crouch. Her backpack caught on the shelf when she moved, a loud clang-twang as it plucked the edge of the metal rack like a guitar string and she gritted her teeth at the reverberating tone.

For a long second there was nothing, no sound of footsteps getting closer or further. Then, there was a barely-there snap and a metallic click.

“Wait.” Abby’s voice was hoarse, a croak as she scrambled into a crouch that would hopefully let her move quickly if someone started shooting at her. “I’m not – I’m not one of them.”

“Stand up.” The voice was clipped and sharp and came from the back end of the aisle on the complete opposite side from the entrance and Abby stared blankly at the uniformed, clean-shaven cop for a few seconds as she tried to decide whether or not there were two people or if he’d actually managed to move around the store that quietly and quickly.

“Weren’t you just over there?” Abby gasped quietly. “I thought – I heard you over there.”

The man had his pistol out, clutched in both hands. He had it aimed at the ground directly in front of him, ready to spring up at a moment’s notice. She waited as he surveyed her up and down, eyes narrowing on the gun easily visible on her belt.

“I’m not doing anything – I’m just trying to get home.” Abby explained quickly, trying not to sound guilty. “I’ve been walking for hours and hours and I just needed to take a break.”

The man stared at her hard for a long time. “You hurt?”

“No.” Abby shook her head to emphasize the point. “Just exhausted.”

The man nodded, smoothly sticking his pistol back into the nylon holster. Without another word, he was moving back the way he’d come and this time she heard his footsteps down the next aisle over. She followed the sound with her eyes, mouth open on a question she would have asked if she could find the words. She saw him pass by the opposite end of the aisle again, moving back behind the register and starting to poke at the unpowered register and computer, ducking down to look around for something.

“What are you doing?” Abby asked, pushing to her feet. She winced, her muscles screaming at her how sore they were and it took her a minute to unlock them from stillness.

He didn’t answer, intent on whatever it was he was looking for.

Unsure, Abby slowly walked closer to where he was getting more frantic rummaging around the counter, pushing stuff off onto the floor and actually tilting up the cash register.

“What are you looking for?”

The man looked up at her. “A key.”

Abby frowned. “For the pumps?”

“Yes. This is the only place in town with a manual system. It’s the only place that runs when the power’s out.” He started shaking the register as if it might pop open and reveal the elusive key just by the force of his frustration.

“They’re sold out.” Abby said stupidly. “Even if you find it, there’s probably not any gas left.”

The man huffed, a groaning, irritated growl of a sound and ignored her as he took a knife out of his belt to try and pry open the register.

“It’d be easier to jack fuel from a car.” She continued, hoping she wasn’t pushing too hard. “Can I – will you tell me what’s going on?”

The man’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t stop his rummaging.

“I get that shit’s going down.” Abby explained quickly. “I got the gist that there’s some virus going around and that people are going feral and eating people and whatnot. It’s just – this happened so fast. Yesterday morning when I left for work, things were fine and I know there was shit happening everywhere but I don’t get how it happened. I don’t – they’re evacuating the entire state. How did it go from a few riots to this since yesterday?”

The cop snorted. “They don’t tell us anything. We just got orders from higher up. They’ve been playing it down, how bad it’s been getting. We didn’t get briefed until a few days ago and even then – there was no way we were gonna be able to go ‘round and find everyone that got bit. There were too many people cropping up in the hospitals, people that don’t bother with doctors. We thought – I thought it was drugs, at first. It’s been happening for weeks.”

He stopped prying at the register long enough to slam the machine against the top of the counter a few times. Abby flinched at the sudden loud noise, but kept listening as his voice cracked. “It was just a few cases, here and there. We started getting calls about people going crazy and we’d get there and they’d be tweaking so bad they’d be eating each other. We thought it was drugs, something new that was coming in from down south. But it kept happening and getting worse and then there were people declared dead that were getting up again just as hopped up as the people that went crazy on them… It was the outdated equipment, faulty machines at the hospital, it was a malfunction – that’s what we put in the reports. But it kept happening, kept getting worse and then we finally got some news from the feds. That was four days ago. After weeks, we got the run down and got the order to start quarantining people. Like we had the means to do that, like it wasn’t already too far gone to matter.”

He shook his head, staring hard down at the bent knife clenched in his hand. “The cities are safe. I’m trying to get people to the safe-zone. I got a bus-full of people I’m trying to send to Springfield and not enough fuel to get there.”

Abby was silent for a moment, rubbing a knuckle into the center of her forehead. “You need diesel then?”

“Yeah.”

“MFA – you try there?”

“It won’t work without the power.”

“They sell generators. Hook one of them suckers up, scrounge up a gallon or so of unleaded and get yourself as much diesel as you need.” Abby shrugged, sticking her thumbs under the straps on her bag to try and get rid of some of the pain in her shoulders.

“That’s…” The man gaped at her. “I would never have thought to do that.”

Abby shrugged, moving towards the door. “Good luck, man. You got your work cut out for you.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I need to get to my family. Still have to get across town, and after that I got another five miles to walk. The longer I stop moving, the harder it is to get going again.”

“Help me and we can swing out and pick them up before leaving.” He countered, and there was a hitch in his voice. “Please. I need help. It’s just two of us trying to get all these people out.”

“I’m not going back towards the city.” Abby said flatly.

“It’s safe.”

“You sure about that? How are they screening people? How many are they set up for? Can they even keep taking people? Because from what I saw, the highway was backed up straight to Seymour. Thousands of people on that one highway. Where are they putting everyone?”

The cop stared at her. “You came from there?”

“It was a mess.” Abby scrunched her nose. “All lanes were completely packed. I had to take highway 76, and that was blocked by a rollover and there were a few of those ferals running around there and I passed a whole lot of them coming up through the towns.”

“But – that’s all there is left to do. To get people out to the safe zones. I’ve been sending folks there. My family headed out that way yesterday.”

Abby winced at that. “You do what feels right. Running away to the city just doesn’t feel right to _me_.”

He was silent for a while, frowning at her and Abby shifted nervously, looking towards the open door and mentally mapping the quickest path through town and out to her house. It was going to take her at least two hours if she didn’t hit any problems on the way. When she looked back at the still nameless cop, he was still staring at her.

“What?” She knew she sounded defensive, could feel the punch of guilt beneath her sternum. “I have to get home. I don’t even – I don’t even know if my family is okay.”

He huffed. “Help me get fuel for the bus and I’ll give you a ride wherever you need to go.”

She scowled, thinking. A ride would be great. Fast, would save her a long trek – and it couldn’t take that much time to fuel up a bus, right? Unless they were planning on hoofing fuel from the pumps to the rig in five gallon cans or some other dumb-shit thing like that.

“The bus got enough fuel to make it to MFA?” Abby asked, “Because if you’re planning something stupid like lugging that shit five gallons at a time from MFA to wherever that bus is parked, you’re on your own.”

“There ought to be enough to get it there.” He answered slowly. “They never let those things go completely empty.”

Abby nodded. “Let’s do this, then.”


End file.
